Making Council meetings more accessible: A new approach to public questions puts residents at heart

At yesterday's Annual Council Meeting (Wednesday, 15th May), councillors approved proposals to alter how the public interact with the Council’s committees in a bid to encourage more citizen involvement in Sheffield’s democracy.

To improve public access to committees and decision making, in the future, committees will allow members of the public to join remotely to ask questions or read statements as well as being able to attend committee meetings in person.

Livestreaming of Council and Committee meetings will continue as usual.

Members of the public will also have the option to have their questions or statements read out by someone else on their behalf – either a nominated person or a Council officer.

There will now be several ways to participate in a Council or Committee meeting to provide members of the public more opportunities to engage. These include:

Written questions (Remit)

• These must be submitted by 9am, six clear working days before the scheduled meeting.
• Written questions will be responded to and published one clear day before the relevant meeting. There is no requirement for questioners to attend the meeting, however they can if they wish to do so.
• At Full Council meetings questions must be about matters relating to Sheffield or Council services. At Committee meetings questions must relate to the remit of the relevant Committee.

Supplementary questions

• These arise directly from the original written question and/or the response.
• These must be submitted in writing by 9am on the working day before the relevant meeting.
• Supplementary questions can be asked verbally - in person, on screen, by a nominated person or read out by a Council officer.
• The Leader of the Council or Commitee Chairs at Council Meetings or Committee Chair at Committee meetings can reply to supplementary questions.
• Written responses to questions will be published within 10 working days of the meeting.

Questions (Agenda items)

• Can be submitted relating to items on the published agenda for a specific Full Council or Committee meeting.
• These must be submitted by 9am two clear working days before the scheduled meeting.
• Questions can be asked verbally - in person, on screen, by a nominated person or read out by a Council officer.
• The Leader of the Council or Commitee Chairs at Council Meetings or Committee Chair at Committee meetings can reply to questions.
• Written responses to questions will be published within 10 working days of the meeting.

Statements

• Can be submitted on matters within the remit of Full Council or the Committee or in specific reference to agenda items. These will be read out at the relevant meeting, and may not require a specific response from that meeting.
• Statements relevant to Full Council or a specific Committee must be submitted by 9am, six clear working days before the scheduled meeting.
• All statements will be published online the working day before the relevant meeting and circulated to all Members of the meeting.
• Statements may be read in person, on screen, by a nominated person or by a Council officer.
• There is no commitment to respond to statements, but the Lord Mayor or relevant Committee Chair reserves the right to reply at Council meetings. At Committee meetings the Committee Chair reserves the right to reply.

The changes will be implemented as soon as practically possible. A further update will be provided on Sheffield City Council channels to confirm when the changes are in place.

Councillor Fran Belbin, Chair of the Governance Committee at Sheffield City Council, said:

“As an organisation we are committed to making Council meetings more accessible and putting residents at the heart of democracy. These proposed enhancements would streamline the process, making best use of the allocated time in meetings and opening up more ways for members of the public to interact with us.”