Part 4 - Rules of access to information about the County Council's formal business
Below are the rules of access to information about the County Council's formal business.
- 1 - Introduction
- 2 - The public's right to attend meetings
- 3 - The public’s right to obtain copies of the agenda to meetings and reports and documents that are to be discussed at meetings
- 4 - Sub-committees, panels and groups
- 5 - Decisions by the Leader of the Council, Cabinet Members and Officers
- 6 - Minutes of meetings and executive decisions
- 7 - Charges for the supply of agenda, reports and background papers
- 8 - The special rules that apply to “key decisions”
- 9 - Exceptions to the need to publish notice of a key decision 28 days in advance
- 10 - The general exception rule
- 11 - The special urgency rule
- 12 - Scrutiny committees
- 13 - Elected Members’ additional rights of access to information
- 14 - Additional rights of access to information by Scrutiny Committees
- 14 - Elected Members’ duty of confidence
- Appendix to rules on the public's right of access to information about the council's formal business
- County Councillors are provided with exempt and confidential information in confidence. Accordingly if a County Councillor discloses this information to the press or any third party they are liable to breach the Council’s Code of Conduct for Members. In that event a County Councillor may be reported to the Audit and Governance Committee of the Council, which will investigate whether the Code has been breached.
- In view of the risks associated with any breach of Members’ duty of confidence County Councillors must ensure that exempt and confidential information is only used for the performance of their duties as County Councillors. They should also keep the information securely, avoid making copies of it, and ensure that it is disposed of in a way that prevents anyone else from reading it (the best course of action is to return documents to the Democratic Services Unit so that it may be shredded).
Page updated:
08/10/2020
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