An urgent smaller committee has been formed to make decisions on the future of Reading during the Coronavirus pandemic and will meet next Tuesday.

Reading Borough Council’s (RBC) monitoring officer has triggered part of the council’s constitution which allows for a three-member policy committee to take urgent decisions.

The council closed the Civic Offices and many other buildings to the public on Tuesday morning and cancelled all non-essential meetings, following government advice to halt the spread of Covid-19.

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The urgent policy committee will meet on Tuesday at 5pm to vote on matters including:

  • £9 million investment in road repairs
  • A new tree strategy
  • The draft local transport plan
  • How Palmer Park will be revamped
  • Motions on renewable energy and wildflowers

The meeting was announced this morning at short notice under the Section 100B (3) (a) of the Local Government Act.

There will be no public gallery at the meeting but it will be webcast for live and repeat viewing.

What will the new committee do?

The three-member policy committee, which will include one opposition councillor, will take urgent decisions on all functions of the authority, including on behalf of other committees, and full council.

On Tuesday, the committee will discuss and vote on matters from the following cancelled meetings:

  • Strategic Environment, Planning & Transport Committee (March 16)
  • Personnel Committee (March 18)
  • Full Council (March 24).

Planning and Licensing decisions, however, are likely to be overseen by their own streamlined committees.

The three committee members for Tuesday’s meeting are:

  • Councillor Jason Brock, leader of RBC
  • Councillor Tony Page, lead member for Strategic Environment, Planning and Transport and deputy leader of RBC
  • Councillor Jeanette Skeats, leader of the Conservative opposition

The councillors will primarily consider items of business that had been due to be determined at meetings which have been cancelled as a result of the council’s partial lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Petitions and questions submitted to the cancelled meetings will be responded to in writing and published online in the Policy committee agenda.

Why has the council chosen to take decisions in this way?

Section 7.7 of RBC’s constitution sets out how the council can make decisions on ‘urgent items’.

This includes allowing a three-member policy committee to take decisions on behalf of full council and other committees.

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Here is what the constitution says in full about urgent decisions:

“The Policy committee may take urgent decisions on all functions of the authority, including on behalf of other committees, and Full Council, subject to the function not being reserved by statute to Full Council or another Committee.

“An item of business will be urgent if the need for the decision could not have been foreseen at the preceding scheduled meeting of the relevant committee, Policy committee or Full Council, and to delay taking the decision to the next scheduled meeting of either the relevant committee or Full Council would seriously prejudice either the council’s or the public’s interests.

“The Policy committee may call additional meetings to deal with any such urgent items of business, subject to:

“A) The meeting being called and the agenda published in line with the Access to Information Procedure Rules in part 4 of this Constitution;

“B) the Committee having a quorum of three members present, which includes: i) the leader or deputy leader ii) the lead councillor responsible for the function concerned or the chair of the responsible committee (if different, and a Policy committee member)

“In exceptional cases, where it is not possible to call an urgent meeting comprising the above, the Head of Paid Service or Monitoring Officer may agree to an additional meeting of Policy committee being held to determine an urgent item of business to prevent the council or public interest being seriously prejudiced, with up to three different members of the Policy Committee present.

“The facility to call additional Policy committee meetings to determine urgent items of business is in addition to the general facility available to all Committees to call additional meetings as set out in para. 7.3.2.”