Agenda item - Procedural Business

(a)      Declaration of Substitutes: Where Councillors are unable to attend a meeting, a substitute Member from the same Political Group may attend, speak and vote in their place for that meeting.

(b)      Declarations of Interest:

(a)      Disclosable pecuniary interests;

(b)      Any other interests required to be registered under the local code;

(c)      Any other general interest as a result of which a decision on the matter might reasonably be regarded as affecting you or a partner more than a majority of other people or businesses in the ward/s affected by the decision.

In each case, you need to declare:

(i)        the item on the agenda the interest relates to;

(ii)      the nature of the interest; and

(iii)     whether it is a disclosable pecuniary interest or some other interest.

If unsure, Members should seek advice from the committee lawyer or administrator preferably before the meeting.

(c)       Exclusion of Press and Public: To consider whether, in view of the nature of the business to be transacted, or the nature of the proceedings, the press and public should be excluded from the meeting when any of the following items are under consideration.

NOTE:    Any item appearing in Part Two of the Agenda states in its heading the category under which the information disclosed in the report is exempt from disclosure and therefore not available to the public.

A list and description of the exempt categories is available for public inspection at Brighton and Hove Town Halls and on-line in the Constitution at part 7.1.

11 Procedural Business

11a Declarations of substitutions: Cllr Parrott for Cllr Cattell. Cllr Mackey for Cllr Wilkinson.

11b Declarations of interest:

11c Exclusion of the press and public:

Amongst the papers circulated to elected members were confidential (Part 2) papers from the Cabinet Meeting. Any discussion of these papers will need to be in confidential session and will need to exclude the press & public from these discussions. We will move into a Part 2 confidential session towards the end of the meeting, if members indicate that they wish to discuss information shared in the Part 2 papers. All committee members are reminded not to raise matters contained in the Part 2 documentation during the public meeting.

11.1 Cllr Miller raised that she had not received the Part Two documents. Giles Rossington, Scrutiny Manager, said that members had been sent the documents and any access issues were down to individual member access issues.

11.2 Mark Strong raised a point of order regarding public engagement for call-in meetings as the meeting was arranged and the agenda published after the deadline for public engagement. Giles Rossington said that as with any public engagement submitted after the deadline it would be at the Chair’s discretion to accept any public engagement.

11.3 Cllr Miller raised that Appendix three was missing from the report. Giles Rossington said that Appendix three was the minutes of the cabinet meeting and was due to be published this morning but was held up due to technical issues. He said that the minutes of the cabinet meeting were skeletal and essential said that a discussion was held, and a decision was made and therefore would not add much to the committee’s decision-making process today.

11.4 Cllr Sykes noted that the chair had said that discussion had been held with key people regarding the timing of the meeting, and wanted to know who it had been discussed with. The Chair said that those who were essential for the meeting to be held had been in discussion, including herself, Cllr Taylor as the relevant cabinet member, and officers who had worked on the decision. She added that most members had not been consulted and that the meeting had to be held within seven days of the acceptance of the call-in request and so it was a challenge to fit in a meeting.

11.5 Cllr Goddard said that due to the short notice of the meeting he was grateful to the substitutes who had come and to Cllr Taylor who was actually on annual leave but had come in to answer the call-in. He made the point that scrutiny’s role was to look at the process of decision making not the history of New England House and that he was interested to hear what was wrong with the decision-making process. The Chair said that the grounds for the call-in request were set out in the appendices and included a lack of information on which to base the decision.