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Note: In this Part the word ‘Chairman’ means the person actually presiding at a meeting and ‘Council’ includes ‘committee’ where any function has been delegated.


BASIC PRINCIPLES

1 The officers and agents of the Council must act as the Council’s executive and carry out its decisions. They cannot do this properly unless they have instructions which they can understand.

2 It is the primary, if not the only, function of the Council to frame instructions upon which people can act; even a decision to take no action, is such an instruction.

3 The Council’s instructions are conveyed by resolutions and it is the purpose of the Council’s proceedings to reach, without unreasonable delay, an intelligible and lawful decision for the right reasons. The whole duty of a Chairman is to ensure that this purpose is achieved and to this end he must:

(a) protect the Council against outside interference;
(b) ensure that everything to be discussed is lawful;
(c) ensure that the Council is invited to deal with clear issues;
(d) ensure that as far as possible information is complete;
(e) permit every point of view to have a fair hearing;
(f) ensure that opinions expressed are relevant to the matter in hand;
(g) ensure that business is transacted with reasonable speed;
(h) ensure as far as possible that proceedings are friendly and free form personalities;
(i) co-operate with the officers and councillors.

THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHAIR

Origin

4 The office of Chairman of a local authority is created by statute, which has conferred upon the occupant of the chair a second or casting vote on all occasions but one (see Standing Order 11.2). The scope of his authority, however, depends upon ancient customs which are perfectly logical and arise from the necessities of the case.

Nature and limitations

5 Whether or not the Council has passed any standing orders, the Chairman’s procedural authority is derived from the Council as a whole and an individual councillor must obey his rulings because they are the rulings of the Council itself. It follows from this, however, that the Chairman cannot overrule the Council and that a councillor who is dissatisfied by the Chairman’s ruling may invite the Council to disagree with it. Such appeals against the chair ought to be very rare.

6 The authority of the Chairman, as such, is limited to matters of procedure and neither increases nor decreases his right (in comparison with other members) to discuss the merits of a particular case. It is one of his most difficult tasks to remember that, while the Chair gives him authority on matters of procedure, it confers no rights (other than the casting vote) on matters of policy above those possessed by other members.

PRELIMINARY

7 Before any meeting, the Chairman should study the items on the agenda with either the Clerk or any other officers, and should in effect ask in respect of each item the following questions:

What does it mean?
Is it lawful?
Do we know enough about it?
Has any member special knowledge of this problem?
Is there any member who may have a prejudicial interest?

OUTSIDE INTERFERENCE

Public disturbances

8 No one is entitled to interrupt or obstruct the proceedings of the Council or its committees. In general it is best to stop an interruption at once before the habit spreads to the rest of the audience and though he will naturally not wish to be rude, the Chairman should cut an interrupter short. If good humour and conciliation fail to produce silence he may have to warn him that he will be turned out if he does it again. If the warning is ignored it should be resolved, without discussion, that the interrupter be excluded, and if he fails to leave he should be removed by force. Care should be taken to use no more force than necessary. It is not essential to call the police, but may be necessary.

9 The Chairman should never argue or allow argument with an interrupter. If the public becomes disorderly it may eventually be necessary to close the meeting or to adjourn to a more private place. It is, however, illegal to decide to exclude the public from any future meeting. The press is in a privileged position inasmuch as its representatives must so far as possible be given facilities for taking their reports.

Personal and prejudicial interests

10 The law requires that where a member has a personal interest in any matter he must disclose the existence and nature of that interest. If the personal interest is also prejudicial the member should withdraw from the meeting and take no further part in the relevant proceedings or seek to influence those proceedings. The Chairman should before a meeting consider whether any member (including himself) may have any such interest, and may draw the individual member’s attention to the possibility before it starts. However, ultimately, it is for the member to decide whether or not to disclose any relevant interest. Failure to disclose an interest (personal or prejudicial) can lead to an investigation by the Standards Board.

Rulings on notices

11 The Chairman must be satisfied that the meeting is lawful. He does not need to have personal knowledge that the proper notices and summonses have been issued, but if complaints are made he must give a ruling based upon the essential justice of the matter. A meeting is not necessarily illegal because someone has not received a notice to which he is entitled, but where an irregularity appears to be intentional or important the meeting should be adjourned until it has been corrected.

Quorum

12 No business can be transacted if no quorum is present. This rule applies not only to cases of physical absence but to cases of disqualification by interest. A situation may, therefore, sometimes arise where the Council cannot act because it is impossible to obtain a disinterested quorum. In such a case the Chairman should adjourn the matter until it can be next dealt with. Those members with a prejudicial interest requiring withdrawal should consider making an application for dispensation to the District Standards Committee where appropriate.

Ultra vires proposals

13 The Chairman should satisfy himself that any proposal involving expenditure is lawful and should rule any unlawful proposal or amendment out of order. Where there is any doubt, advice should be sought well before the meeting and in time to delete it, if necessary, from the agenda. The section 137 power (contained in the Local Government Act 1972) is not a ‘long stop’ in case of a mistake; expenditure under this heading requires a special resolution, related to the provisions of that section.

A CLEAR ISSUE

14 Every decision of the Council must be made by an affirmative vote of a majority of those present and voting (including, where necessary, the Chairman’s second or casting vote). The members must, therefore, know exactly what they are being asked to decide and each proposition must be put to them in a form which can be answered by a simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. From this there follow certain practical consequences:

(a) All motions should be affirmative in form; it is never necessary to move that a resolution be rejected;

(b) Where there is more than one solution to a problem each solution must be separately put to the vote.

The affirmative form

15 The most exact method of putting a question to the vote is by the use of the following formula:

‘The resolution is as follows: (eg) ‘That the Clerk’s salary be raised to £5,000 a year.’

The motion is that this resolution be agreed to.”

Note: A resolution is a proposal of the action intended to be taken: for example ‘That the Council buy a mower’. A motion is the procedural formula by which the Council disposes of business: for example ‘The motion is that the resolution be amended by ________________’ or ‘The motion is that the Council do now adjourn’.

Separating the issues

16 In attempting to reach a decision a Council may from time to time be faced with alternative solutions. Some alternatives may be mutually exclusive; others may be matters of detail subsidiary to the principal issue.

17 Where the alternatives are mutually exclusive it may be desirable in the first instance to discuss the resolutions, embodying them together until the general trend of opinion is apparent and then to put one of them in the form of an amendment to the other. For instance, if a Council considers that it can afford either a swimming pool or a new playing field but not both, a decision to provide the one in practice excludes the other. Therefore, the resolution on behalf of each should be discussed together and the issue at this stage may be informally stated thus:

‘If the Council is to spend its money would it prefer a swimming pool or a playing field?’

In more formal language the issue is put to the vote by substantive resolution and amendment:

‘The resolution is that the swimming pool be provided. To this the following amendment has been moved:

leave out the words ‘swimming pool’ and substitute the words ‘new playing field.’

The motion is that this is amendment be agreed to.”

18 A vote on an amendment does not end the matter: it merely decides what shall be discussed next. Thus, in the example, if the amendment is carried, all further discussion of the swimming pool becomes out of order, but the Council has yet to decide whether the major operation shall be carried out at all. This is done by putting the resolution as amended to the vote. (See also paragraph 35).

METHOD OF VOTING

19 The rules on the manner in which decisions are taken are peremptory and admit of no exceptions. Every decision must be reached by a majority of those voting. Appointments to employments must be decided in the same way as other questions.

COMPLETENESS OF INFORMATION

20 Sensible decisions cannot be reached without reasonably complete information, which it is usually the duty of the Clerk to supply. The Chairman should before the meeting consider whether enough information is available or likely to be made available, and at the meeting he should make a point of asking a member with special knowledge to give his opinion. If it appears at the meeting that information is still insufficient he should move to adjourn consideration until more is known, and sometimes it may be desirable to frame questions and to instruct the Clerk to obtain the answers by a specified date.

IMPARTIALITY

21 When differences of opinion develop in discussion it is the duty of the Chairman to give a fair hearing to all points of view including his own, if he has one. It is not his duty as Chairman to suppress his own convictions nor his privilege to impose his opinions. Experience has shown that the safest and least controversial course is for the Chairman to call upon speakers for and against a proposal to speak alternately and himself to avoid speaking first or last.

22 Some people are better at putting a case than others and the Chairman ought to allow reasonable latitude to the less eloquent. For this reason mechanical rules of debate limiting, for instance, the time allowed for a speech or the number of times a member may speak, are undesirable, and the Chairman should have some latitude in applying them, especially in a Council with a small membership.

RELEVANCE

General rule

23 A speech must be directed to the point under discussion and nothing else. This rule is easy to state, but not always easy to apply fairly, because the relevance of what is being said may be understood by the speaker before it is grasped by the listener. Whilst the rule should not be made a cover for ‘barracking from the chair’ it is probably true that if Chairmen enforced it more strictly, business would be much more quickly and efficiently conducted than is often the case, and many unnecessary arguments and even some quarrels would be avoided. Bad feeling originates in irrelevancies more often than in any other way. On the other hand, it is sometimes advantageous to allow irrelevance in order to ‘clear the air’. Too harsh suppression can breed ill will and a sense of grievance.

Personalities

24 The Chairman should do his best to prevent observations in discussion; the custom whereby the speeches are in a form addressed to the Chairman, should only be observed because it forces members to employ an impersonal mode of expression. If a member makes an offensive personal observation, the Chairman should immediately intervene to seek immediate apology to an offended member.

Methods of enforcement

25 Where a speech is obviously irrelevant the Chairman should stop the speaker and invite him to return to the point or sit down. Where the irrelevance is not quite so obvious the Chairman may often find it convenient to ask the speaker to explain how his remarks relate to the issue.

Revival of decided issues

26 The Chairman should not allow a matter that has been decided to be reopened at the same meeting. An attempt to ‘hark back’ to a previous agenda item should be firmly ruled out of order as irrelevant to the matter now under discussion, even if the member who raises it was not present when the item was considered.

Minutes

27 One of the commonest irrelevancies is the practice of attempting to discuss the merits of what is contained in the Minutes, on a motion for their signature as a correct record. On such a motion the only issue is whether the words of the Minutes accurately record the events at the meeting of which they are a record.




Other problems

28
(a) If any substantial issue arises on a matter dealt with in the Minutes, it is better to have a separate agenda item than to discuss it under ‘Matters Arising’. That heading should be used only for reports of progress, and not for new or additional decisions.

(b) Letters received by the Council should not be read out verbatim: this provokes irrelevant discussion on wording and is liable to lead to misunderstanding by the public. On the very rare occasions that the exact text is needed by every councillor the Clerk should issue copies. Normally it is sufficient to report the main issue in the letter: for example ‘Mrs Smith of has written asking the Council to get the pile of rubbish removed from outside 48 Lane’.

REASONABLE DESPATCH

Intervals

29 It is important that business should be transacted with reasonable speed. Long meetings bore the members and so reduce the level of attentiveness and public spirit, and long intervals between meetings lead to missed opportunities and lack of continuity. A local council cannot expect to be consulted regularly by other bodies such as the County or District Council if it does not answer letters reasonably promptly. For this reason it should meet at least once a month, and the Chairman ought not to hesitate to call special meetings in necessary cases; the greater the interval between regular meetings the more ready he should be to call them. The right of local councils to be notified of planning applications makes this especially important.

Obstruction at meetings

30 Deliberate obstruction is rare, b