The Executive Meeting considered recommendations of the Constitution Working Party from its meeting held on 28 November 2012 on proposed amendments to the Council Meeting Procedure Rules and have recommended that the Council Meeting be approve the following:-
i) the establishment of a separate procedure for public questions at Area Committee enabling questions to be submitted prior to the commencement of the meeting;
ii) in relation to Executive Question Time:-
· any councillor be permitted to ask up to four questions of an executive councillor, this to include supplementary questions and questions requesting clarification to a previous answer given (the period for each question shall not exceed three minutes);
· each question to be answered individually by the Executive Councillor;
· following questions to each executive councillor, councillors to be permitted to make comments on executive business for up to three minutes;
· the appropriate executive councillors (s) have a right of reply
iii) any councillor to be permitted to ask up to four questions of the chairs of the Scrutiny, Ordinary, Area and Ward Committees;
iv) all amendments to be submitted in writing and a copy provided to the Chief Executive and Monitoring Officer before they are debated;
v) clarification provided in the Rules to make clear that any further amendments moved at the meeting cannot be such as to have substantially the same effect as an amendment previously moved at the same meeting and having already been dispensed with by the Council Meeting;
vi) presentations, including questions at the Council Meetings to last no longer than 20 minutes.
The Executive also endorsed
· the recommendations of the Constitution Working Party in relation to a further review of the governance arrangements in relation to Council companies, associated organisations and outside bodies and the role of members on these bodies (paragraph 3.4 of the report) be endorsed; and
· the proposal to develop guidance on the use of Social Media at the Council Meeting and the recommendation of the Constitution Working Party not to include this within the Constitution.