Lib Dem plans to increase openness passed

11.35.00am BST (GMT +0100) Thu 22nd Oct 2009

Would you like to find out more about council discussions on waste, carbon reduction, the way council meetings operate. Councillor discussions on these, and other matters may become open to the public after a Liberal Democrat request for action was agreed.

At this week's City Council meeting, Liberal Democrat Councillor, Rosalind Wright, urged the Council's ruling group to consider ways of opening up the Council's "working party" meetings so that members of the public can attend.

Cllr Wright says:

"I applaud the fact that most of our meetings are public, but I think we could go further. In the interests of being open and transparent, we should aim to do all business publicly, unless there are good reasons for us not to. We already have provisions to discuss matters privately, if we need to, and it is important that those provisions are used, but on the working parties I sit on, there are a number of items which are not sensitive and which may be of interest to residents, or people visiting or working in the city. If we are serious about winning people's trust in the democratic process, we must stop creating barriers. Public access to meetings is one way of doing this."

Working Parties are made up of councillors (membership is proportional to the size of the political group on the City Council). They meet informally, with officers, to discuss matters such as progress on the roll-out of changes to the waste collection, the programme of carbon reduction, changes to the Council's constitution, contracts.

The motion was eventually passed with support from all four parties. The text of the motion reads:

Council notes:

the efforts made by the Council to involve and interest local people in what the Council does and the decisions it takes;

the important discussion and decisions that take place in the working parties on issues such as waste collection, climate change, and public engagement;

that there are, for legal, financial and other reasons, occasions when council debate and decision-making has to take place privately;

Council believes:

that openness, transparency and access to information are key to the restoration of trust in local democratic processes;

as much Council business as possible should be conducted publicly,

Council resolves to:

ask the Executive to explore new ways of opening up working party meetings to the public including uploading to the council website, where possible, all agendas, reports and minutes.