Council miss Ty Pawb report deadline ahead of Scrutiny Committee meeting

Wrexham Council’s Employment, Business and Investment Scrutiny Committee (EBIS) are set to probe the ‘performance’ of Ty Pawb at a meeting on Wednesday, but have only just got key reports.

Traditionally councillors have the reports well before meetings to ensure they can digest them, and understand issues before putting together questions for officers and Lead councillors.

Such reports are key for those who are external to the council as many do take an interest on what is and is not being done ultimately by those spending tax payers money, as well as being custodians of the culture and heritage of an area.

Wrexham Council often speak of raising standards, looking to excel with best practice and being ‘open and transparent’. Part of that is communicating with people locally.

The Council’s constitution says meeting reports and documents should be circulated to councillors – where available – three clear days before a meeting. By convention that also has included publication on the council’s website to all.

Again, by convention we have historically been told a ‘clear day’ should not include the day of the notice – nor the day of the meeting itself, and also excludes bank holidays and weekends. For the meeting on Wednesday it could be argued circulation, if not publication, should have been on Thursday. Some ‘best practice’ around the UK recommends that period should be at least five or even seven days before a meeting, however that has never been taken up locally.

On Friday we, and others, queried where the reports were – with further questions this morning. Some reports emerged early in the afternoon before being pulled, and the final documents only emerged after 4pm.

Crucially we are told councillors were left in the same situation as members of the public with ‘no clue what was going on’ – with no report going to them before the ‘three clear days’ window.

The Local Government and Elections (Wales) Act 2021 indicate the reports could be considered, if deemed ‘urgent’:

(6)An item of business may not be considered at a meeting of a principal council in Wales unless either—

(a)a copy of the agenda including the item (or a copy of the item) is published electronically at least three clear days before the meeting, or, if the meeting is convened at shorter notice, at the time it is convened, or

(b)by reason of special circumstances, which must be specified in the minutes, the chair of the meeting is of the opinion that the item should be considered at the meeting as a matter of urgency.

 

Notice periods have been a periodic hot topic at Wrexham Council with similar ‘working days’ deadlines for questions submitted by public and members to Executive Board meetings with zero leeway given on the cut off date – regardless of how ‘urgent’ they are.

It is unclear if the report will be accepted by the EBIS committee on Wednesday, or if a similar standard to question deadlines is held.

As this is an unusual situation it is unclear if the committee will question the Lead Officer and Lead Member to outline what has gone wrong and why, and what has been done to ensure it does not happen again.

The four documents for the “Ty Pawb Performance 21/22” can now, finally, be viewed on https://moderngov.wrexham.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=139&MId=5810&LLL=0

(Top pic: Marty outside the Guildhall back in 2016 when we highlighted the odd timeframes involved in asking public questions at Executive Board meetings. Since then the Constitution has been ‘improved’, and instead of the deadline now being Wednesdays at noon, it is now five clear working days before the meeting. Generally meetings are held on Tuesdays, so for this month’s meeting questions would have had to be in the Tuesday the week before – tomorrow in this case, for the meeting on the 12th. You won’t know what is on the agenda until Wednesday afternoon, so to submit questions on the contents of reports before the Executive Board, you would still require the skills of Emmett Lathrop Brown, PhD…)