‘GOING AGAINST DEMOCRACY’ WITH CHANGE TO PETITION RULE
Campaigners would need 1,000 signatures to address full council
PETITIONERS would need to collect at least 1,000 signatures to get the chance to address all Stoke-on-trent councillors – under a proposed change to the rules.
Stoke-on-trent City Council is considering an amendement to its petitions scheme, which will make it harder for campaigners to raise issues at full council meetings.
At the moment, any petitioner who collects 100 or more signatures is given the opportunity to deliver a three-minute speech at full council, with 5,000-name petitions automatically triggering a full council debate, which would include a five-minute speech from the lead petitioner.
Under the proposed change to the constitution, the bar for triggering a full council debate would be lowered to 1,000 signatures.
But petitions with 100 or more signatures, but fewer than 1,000, would be automatically referred to the relevant overview and scrutiny commitee, with no full council involvement at all.
Councillors have now deferred making a decision on this change – proposed as part of a raft of amendments to the constitution – after the Labour group claimed it went ‘against democracy’. Labour group leader Paul Shotton, left, said: “The Labour group can generally support the amendments to the constitution, but unfortunately we think that a little more debate needs to happen around the procedure rules.
“I do acknowledge that something needs to be done about this, but this seems too big a jump to take at once.
“The Labour group feels that this is going against democracy.”
In 2018/19 the council received 12 petitions with 100 or more signatures, but only one of these – relating to Burslem Market – received more than 1,000.
Fellow Labour councillor Desiree Elliott added: “I think part of our concerns with this is how it’s going to affect democracy or how we are perceived as a council in terms of public access.
“The report says there are no costs or savings associated with this move. But there could be a loss, possibly, of openness and participation in the democratic process.”
The change to the petitions scheme was proposed by the cross-party constitutional working group.
Council leader Abi Brown, who also leads the Conservative group, said she was happy for the issue to be discussed again.
She said: “I’m slightly bemused by this, considering that the discussion we had at the constitutional working group was supported by the Labour group, but apparently the representative will be sent in to talk about something else next time. But we’re happy to discuss that.”
Councillors agreed to the other amendements, which cover issues such as financial regulations, contract procedures and the protocol for appointing an honorary freeman.