Issue - meetings

Members and Staff representatives considered the report about reviewing the Local Joint Committee constitution which included 10 questions to help decide  whether or not to propose changes to the constitution.

It was noted that if changes were proposed then a new constitution would be drafted and consulted on, it would then be reported back to the next scheduled meeting of the Local Joint Committee before being reported to the Authority meeting for final agreement.

The Committee considered the questions raised in the report and the following points were noted:

·         Concerns were raised regarding the Committee meeting always being held on Fridays, as although this was usually easier for Members to attend it caused problems for Staff representatives to attend.  It was suggested that meetings could possibly be held on Thursdays when Planning Committee site visits are also held and the meeting could be held either before the site visits or after.

·         Staff representatives would be happy to accept 2 Staff Committee representatives and 1 UNISON representative as the quorum for the Staff side.  The quorum for the Members side was then suggested as 3.  However some concern was expressed about whether reducing the quorum would help with attendance at meetings.

·         It was suggested that Local Joint Committee should meet more frequently than the current 2 meetings per year.  Staff representatives suggested that the Committee meetings could be linked to their quarterly meetings with the Head of HR and there was general support for this to happen.

·         The Committee agreed that the current arrangements for rotating the Chair annually and for appointing the Committee Secretary should continue.

·         It was noted that linking the Committee meeting cycle to the Staff meetings with the Leadership Team could generate more items for the Committee agendas.  It was suggested that all Committee Members could be contacted before the meeting report deadlines to ask if anyone had any items to add to the agenda.

·         To raise staff awareness of the Local Joint Committee the Director of Corporate Strategy and Development will include an article in the next edition of the ezine.

Mr Zahid Hamid joined the meeting at 9.30am,during the discussion of this item.

RESOLVED:

The Secretary to prepare a draft revised constitution taking into account the issues raised at the meeting.