We welcome questions at council meetings from members of the public, which are held throughout the year.
You are also welcome to raise issues at any time with your ward councillor, which may be the most appropriate first point of contact for the issue you wish to raise.
Questions to Full Council
- At the beginning of each Full Council meeting 15 minutes will be dedicated to questions received from the public.
- You may submit up to three questions to any one council meeting.
- You will need to give your name and address for each question and indicate which councillor your question is for.
- Your question must not be more than 100 words.
- You may include a supporting statement, no longer than 250 words, to accompany your question.
- Your question must be received by the Chief Executive by 12noon, seven working days before the day of the meeting (for example, if the meeting is held on a Thursday, the deadline would be midday on the Tuesday a week before).
- Supplementary questions are not accepted.
Questions to the Executive
- At the beginning of each Executive meeting 30 minutes will be dedicated to questions received from the public.
- You may submit up to three questions to any one council meeting.
- You will need to give your name and address for each question and indicate which member of the Executive, including the Leader, that your question is for.
- Your question must not be more than 100 words.
- You may include a supporting statement, no longer than 250 words, to accompany your question.
- Your question must be received by the Chief Executive by 12noon, seven days before the day of the meeting (for example, if the meeting is held on a Thursday, the deadline would be midday on the Thursday a week before).
- You may ask one supplementary question.
Asking questions
You are invited to present your question in person at the meeting. If you are unable to attend, you may request that the question is deferred to a meeting later in the year. Depending on the meeting, the Mayor or Leader of the Council, will decide whether the question will be given a written response or that the question will not be dealt with.
A question may not be dealt with at the meeting if:
- there was a lack of time to respond to the question
- the councillor to whom the question is addressed to is not in attendance at the meeting
- not all information is available.
Should your question not be dealt with during the meeting a written response will be provided.
If there is a reasonable belief that your question will not be answered on the night, you may be contacted ahead of time and offered an alternative option.
Rejection of questions
Your question may be rejected if the Chief Executive or Monitoring Officer consider any of the following apply.
- Is a matter about which the Council has no responsibility, nor affects the borough.
- Is defamatory, frivolous, or offensive.
- Requires the disclosure of confidential or exempt information.
- Is the same or very similar to a question that has been submitted to a previous meeting, or a topic reviewed by the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, within the past six months.