Issue - meetings

The Committee was asked to give consideration to a report regarding a Fourth Tier Governance Review, giving the background and local context for such a review and setting out the option for such a review across West Lindsey. Members heard that over recent years it had become apparent that a number of common issues had begun to impact on Town and Parish Councils across the District, such as struggling to attract and retain new Councillors, a lack of appropriate skill sets among Councillors, feelings of loss of democracy and effective local representation and lack of medium to long-term planning. The Corporate Governance and Policy Manager explained it was difficult to identify how widespread these problems were but it was important to consider what options may be needed. He highlighted that the initial plan was to conduct a survey of towns and parishes across the district in order to assess the full situation.

Members discussed the difficulties of ensuring a good response rate to such a survey and it was agreed that there would need to be proactive management from Officers, with the assistance of District Councillors if appropriate. The idea was to understand the scale of any issues across the district and for the survey to generate the aims and outcomes of any subsequent action.

There was further discussion regarding the practicalities of ensuring as many responses as possible and it was agreed that there would need to be alternative methods to run alongside the survey. The Chairman clarified that the purpose was not to conduct the review at this point, rather to ascertain whether a review was needed.

            RESOLVED that

a)    the Governance and Audit Committee undertake to follow the

guidance provided by (the then) Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and the Local Government Boundary Commission (LGBC) for England and conduct a governance review every ten to fifteen years; and

b)    the proposal to undertake a survey of Parish/Town Councils and District Council Members to gauge the level of necessity for change be approved, and for Committee Members to receive a draft of the survey at a subsequent meeting of the Committee within this civic year; and

c)    authority be delegated to the Monitoring Officer in consultation with the Chairman of the Governance and Audit Committee to engage with the Boundary Commission should the need arise.