Reporting On Your Local Council
June 17th, 2010 | Published by Mike Rawlins in Quick Tips | 3 Comments
Your local council could be a rich vein of content for your site. Covering council meetings is something that is happening less & less in the press. We have seen a number of sites that report on their local councils activities and meetings and do it very well, holding their decisions up to some scrutiny in the public eye.
Council meetings are almost exclusively open to the public, there are very few meetings which members of the public are not allowed to attend although there are occasionally agenda items which call for the meeting to be cleared of the public. There is nothing sinister in this, it could just be that there is very good reason why the council or someone named in the discussion needs to have the information out of the public domain.
The first thing you need to do if you want to cover council meetings is find out where and when they are held and get hold of a copy of the agenda, all this information is normally available on the council website, although, it can be quite well hidden until you now where to look for it.
If you can’t find the meeting information by searching your council website, try the fantastic Openly Local site, which is being updated with more councils each day. Look for your council in the list and then have a look at the information which is listed.
You should see at the bottom of the page, Forthcoming Committee Meetings & Committee Documents. These will give you all the information you need to know about the upcoming meetings at your council.
If you have never been to a council meeting before it is worth going along to a couple of different meetings to see how they are run. If you go to your full council meeting this will normally be once a month in the council chamber and will be quite formal with maybe the Lord Mayor chairing it. Sub committees may well be held in other rooms in the council building rather than the council chamber.
It is also worth having a chat with your local councillor, and seeing if they sit on any committees and going along to those meetings.
Next we’ll have a look at agendas and what items are likely to be of intertest.
June 17th, 2010 at 8:50 pm (#)
Very useful post. It’s worth not taking the exemption clause to kick you out of a meeting of face value. These are routinely used to avoid discussing difficult issues in public with little or no justification, as anyone who’s seen a ‘pink’ paper will attest. If it’s used a lot then a reporter should follow it carefully and ask difficult questions.
This guide I wrote a while back might also be useful.
Major recommendations and decisions are taken at meetings of council committees and are the best way of keeping up to date with what a council is doing. These must be open to the press and public, though they can be excluded in some circumstances, for example when commercial information is to be discussed. Agendas are published ahead of the meeting on a council’s website and will provide a wealth of information, some of which will not be referred to in the meeting. Attending the meeting will provide colourful quotes from debates though stories can be based on agendas alone if attendance is not possible. A record of the meeting, its minutes, will be published after it has taken place, but will only include basic details, though some provide video or audio recordings of the meeting. These should go on the council’s website.
The following committees are found in most councils:
Cabinet: this is the ‘ruling’ committee of the council and will include about eight councillors. It can take some decisions and make recommendations to put to council for a final decision (see below). If one political party has a majority of councillors then cabinet recommendations are almost certain to be passed at council as councillors are told how to vote by the council leader (‘whipped’). Attending these meetings is often a reporter’s first chance to find out about a major new council policy, for example raising charges in council-run car parks.
Council: this is the meeting of all councillors. The council takes key decisions and is the opportunity for the opposition to question the party in control. There is usually also an alloted time for members of the public to ask questions. These meetings are not to be missed and happen about once every two months.
Planning: sometimes called ‘development control’, the planning committee has to make decisions on major planning applications, a process most building developments have to go through to go ahead, for example a supermarket or football stadium. Only contentious planning applications will be decided by the committee, about 10 per cent of all applications received. Others are decided in private by officers or senior councillors (see planning).
Scrutiny: broadly referred to as ‘watchdog’ committees these scrutinise the work of the council and other public bodies and provide recommendations for the future. This can include detailed investigations into contentious issues e.g. gritting, and will comprise councillors from all parties. It can ‘call in’ decisions to scrutinise. These are often called ‘overview and scrutiny’ committees. Other names include ‘improvement and review’ committees.
Licensing: councils are responsible for permitting or decling a range of trades, from taxis to strip clubs. One licensing committee will look at broad policies and another will consider specific cases, usually applications for a licence or punishment for breaches. These provide an excellent source of stories.
Standards: the standards committee will consider policy about regulating councillors’ behavoiur and specific complaints against councillors. Some information may not be disclosed to the public under local government laws.
Other committees: other committees vary between councils, from committees to advise on school, footpaths and conservation matters. All meetings of councils are worthy of investigation.
Decisions:
Cabinet members can take decisions outside of committees. These must be published in written form via the council’s website.
June 18th, 2010 at 5:55 am (#)
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June 18th, 2010 at 2:27 pm (#)
Thanks for showing us your guide, can you mail me a link to it and I’ll add it to our resource page if you are ok with that?
I am writing a couple more guides on covering council meetings over the next couple of weeks, unless of course you have any you want to share with us?