A report on some of the items discussed.
In the absence of the Chairman and Vice-Chairman Councillor Bernie Wilde took the chair.
Public Participation, it was again asked that the Council reverts to the practice of the last 30 years of having public participation at the end of the meeting as well as at the beginning so that the public can make comments on what was discussed during the meeting. There was a decision taken a few months ago, without it being discussed at a meeting, to discontinue public participation at the end of the meeting, (why doesn’t the Council want the public to have this opportunity to comment on what they have just discussed?).
The chairman stated that it was in the councils Standing Orders that there was to be no public participation at the end of the meeting and therefore if it was to be changed, it could not be changed until the Standing Orders were changed.
The Chairman was wrong in his statement as you can see from their Standing Orders below.
Reprinted from the Council’s Standing Orders.
- Meetings
- Members of the public are permitted to make representations, answer questions and give evidence in respect of any item of business included in the agenda.
- the period of time (which is at the chairman’s discretion) or (which is designated for public participation in accordance with Standing order 1 (d) above shall not exceed 15 minutes.
A member of the public asked for this to be put on the next agenda. For some unknown reason the Chairman stated that it must be put in writing, although there was an item on the agenda asking for future agenda items. It is a pity that the Chairman does not seem to have read the Council Standing Orders which are on the Councils web page.
The Standing Orders do not state when there should be public participation and so there are no Standing Orders to change.
Job evaluation/advertising for vacancy/pay structure and hours for the Parish Clerk.
Although members adopted this proposal, it was not made public what the actual proposal was and was not stated in the minutes.
List of Documents/policies.
This proposal was also adopted but the public was not aware what the proposal was and was not stated in the minutes.
Planning application.
An amended planning application for 77 Fore Street, Polruan was discussed, the original plan has been approved but this application contained some amendments. The chairman, Councillor Bernie Wilde informed the Council and public that the amended application was for about a 3 foot increase in height (although if he had actually looked at the plans he would have known that there was no increase in height) and the Chairman, although unable to provide a relevant planning reason, wanted to recommend refusal of the application.
Councillor John Adams stated that he only saw the plans on Sunday morning and did not think that he had sufficient time to study them (two days). Councillor Adams recommended refusal on the grounds that the professional architect should know better, “he’s playing the rules, pure gamesmanship”, whatever that means?
There was a split vote in favour of approval but the Chairman seemed to think that he could have a casting vote. He was informed by the clerk that he could not.
Standing Orders.
The Council seemed to think that they had to alter Standing Orders because of the recording of Council meetings. Although there is now an Act in place stating that recording of meetings must be allowed, it has never been illegal to record Council meetings. (see other article regarding this).
Because this is an Act of Parliament there is no need to change Standing Orders to reflect this.
If Council orders contained all the legislation that councils must follow then Standing Orders would be a few inches thick. It would be wise for Councillors to understand what Standing Orders are for.
Freedom Of Information Policy.
There was a discussion regarding this policy, it should be the Publication Scheme that needed to be discussed, I am not sure if the Council realise they have signed up to the model Publication Scheme and this contains items regarding the Freedom Of Information Act.
Some councillors were wanting to make any one issuing a Freedom Of Information request to pay for it (presumably to put off any Freedom Of Information requests).
Once again, do Councillors understand why the Freedom Of Information Act is in force. Perhaps if they did they would realise that is only to allow the public to see documents that should be freely available. A Freedom Of Information request usually needs only to be made when the authority attempts to refuse public access to the documents.
(video of this meeting is on YouTube: Lanteglos PC)