Contents

• Overview
• How to attend committee meetings
• Questions and statements at committee meetings
• Speaking at planning or joint development control committees
• Speaking at licensing and licensing sub-committees
• Filming and photography at committee meetings

The council holds different types of meetings:

• full council meetings which all councillors attend
• regulatory committees which some councillors attend:
  • civic affairs, planning committees and licensing committees
• scrutiny committees which some councillors attend:
  • housing, planning and transport, environment and community and strategy and resources

Questions and statements at committee meetings

Questions and statements must not:

• contain offensive or defamatory expressions
• relate to the conduct of individual Council employees or to human resources matters
• divulge confidential of exempt information
• be identical or very similar to a question or statement that has already been answered at a previous meeting

Public questions and statements are normally dealt with at the beginning of the meeting during the public questions agenda item.

If you are speaking on behalf of a group or organisation, you can introduce yourself, but you do not need to read your question out.

Where ICT equipment permits, the committee manager will share the text of the question on screen.

Responses to questions or statements at committee meetings

The executive councillor, committee chair or officer can respond to a public question for up to two minutes.

Once you’ve received your response, you will have an opportunity to ask a further question or statement for a further two minutes.

The executive councillor, committee chair or officer then has another opportunity to respond for up to two minutes.