The public are to have more time to ask questions at Brighton and Hove City Council meetings after senior councillors voted to change the rules.
The move follows gripes that the public question time session was cut short at the meeting of the full council in July.
Previously, the rules allowed for 15 minutes of questions although the mayor, who chairs the meeting, tended to allow extra time if needed.
Now, the time allocated has been doubled to 30 minutes, with priority given to those who haven’t asked a question in the past six months.
If questions are not reached because time runs out, an answer will be provided in writing.
The decision was taken by the council’s Strategy, Finance and City Regeneration Committee at Hove Town Hall this evening (Thursday 5 October).
Other changes agreed today include reducing the number of “notices of motion” at full council meetings when councillors submit requests to discuss “relevant” topics. Conservative and Green councillors criticised the new limits on motions.
The council’s executive director for governance, people and resources, Abraham Ghebre-Ghiorghis, said that Brighton and Hove had a high level of public engagement.
Over the past six months councillors had submitted 30 notices of motion while there were 14 public deputations, 15 petitions and 58 public questions.
He said: “The figures suggest that our public and member engagement is much higher than Bristol Southampton, Portsmouth, Camden, East and West Sussex.
“This is all to be welcomed, of course, but when you have got that level of engagement, it is also challenging unless you make it streamlined and you have efficient ways of managing that.”
The leader of the council Bella Sankey said that it was important to listen to residents speaking about the pressures that they were facing.
She said: “It is absolutely incumbent on us as a council to use our time wisely, to widen democratic participation and to reduce repetition and political pantomime in the chamber.
“(We need) to ensure that we are focusing all of our attention on facing outwards to our residents, answering their questions and delivering for them.”
Conservative leader Alistair McNair criticised the changes, saying that fewer motions would restrict debate, adding that his party only put forward motions of interest to residents.
Councillor McNair said: “It seems to me that you (Labour) had a very successful election, granted, but Greens and Conservatives between us had probably 70,000 votes so we have a very significant voice in the city.
“To reduce us to having one (notice of motion) each instead of two is essentially taking away the voice of our supporters.”
He welcomed the change to the time allocated to public questions, saying that people were “aghast” when the session was cut off after 15 minutes in the summer.
Mr Ghebre-Ghiorghis said that, even with fewer motions, Brighton and Hove had more than most other councils nationwide which tended to have just one or two per meeting.
Green councillor Sue Shanks said that Labour should have consulted others before bringing the changes to the meeting today.
Councillor Shanks said: “We are all members of the council. It’s not just about what makes life easier for the administration. This should be about us responding to residents.
“As Councillor McNair said, often our (motions) come out of concerns that residents have in the city.
“We’re not representing just our political party. We’re representing the residents in our ward whether they voted for us or not.”
Well, that’s a positive change from the greens.
Labour run the council now, not the Greens!
Oh dear! Poor old Sue Shanks getting uppity
Don’t you know the Greens have a divine right to run the city?
‘gripes’?
It was nothing short of despicable that 7 out of 11 public questioners found themselves cancelled, having had their pre-submitted questions accepted, never mind with a human rights lawyer at the helm of the new Labour administration’s first full council meeting.
It is not the public’s problem if the council can’t programme sufficient time for public engagement.
Half an hour is still pathetic and insufficient.
Any council serving the public would devote half of each Full Council meeting to listening to their electorate.
Moreover they would meet MONTHLY and not a mere five times a year.
Happy to see the increased time but even happier that priority is not given to those who always ask questions.
I have to say whilst I didn’t like it was away from the actual full council meet the hour or so allocated during covid allowed for good scrutiny.
The Jury is out on this in terms of how this works in practice. Of course just like the politicians can get their allies to question, so can we. So there is always a way. Committees often have little public involvement over full council.
The issue here is full council is a change to raise a wider issue and reach more councillors, its a lobby at the end of the day, bringing real life issues or policy suggestions to further improve the council, to scrutinise and ensure public money is being well spent.
If those voices who do that good and important community work, often with good morals and motivations for the majority of residents, well if those voices are kept out of participation that would be a shame.
Full council is not the be all and end all, most of the papers which appear there, have previously appeared at committees, you want to get into these things early, even when they are writing draft reports.
About time. Greens actively stifled public interrogation.
I was one of the 7 who were not allowed to ask their question in the July meeting. Was it because some of the questions were too challenging?
I am still awaiting the written response that I was promised, so I will publish it here.
Q 1. Has the council investigated the cause of the recent collapse in East Street revealing unknown tunnels below?
Q 2. Could the cause have anything to do with the additional weight of the electric buses and taxis? And are the tunnels part of the poorly upheld Victorian sewers that have not been properly maintain by Southern Water for many, many years?
I had to have a chuckle over Bella Sankeys comment “It is absolutely incumbent on us as a council to use our time wisely, to widen democratic participation and to reduce repetition and political pantomime in the chamber.” When she clearly was well scripted with her response to concerns raised over PHSE in schools. The Pantomime she enacted would have been funny if it wasn’t so serious. How she managed to pull the racest card out the hat was simply incredible. These people clearly don’t know the meaning anymore!
She has either had a genuine change of heart, or, as we have become so used to, it is just another lie to try and get a party vote.
I will reserve my judgment for tge time being.
You had written answers, Helen. Get over it.
An extra 15 minutes every three months for pre-prepared answers satisfies you, and is not still also “stifling public interrogation”?
Personally, I do with people would get to the point in three sentences or less for a question that shouldn’t take longer than 30 seconds. You’d get a lot more questions in that way.