Should Peterborough City Council’s decision-making system be changed?

Cllr Nick Sandford has called for the current cabinet system of decision-making to be abolished, arguing that executive decisions should be made at committee level.

The comments came following last week’s Full Council online meeting (9 December), when members voted on a motion put forward by Cllr Ansar Ali to ban hunting on council-owned land.

Full Council members approved the motion by 30 votes to 26.

However, Cllr Sandford, Leader of the LibDem Group, said following the meeting: “It’s an interesting point on the hunting motion that most people seem to have missed: banning hunting on council land is an Executive decision, so only the Cabinet can make it, and not the Full Council.

“As a result, the vote at Full Council might have no effect at all.”

Cllr Sandford’s’ comments are a direct result of the Cabinet System of decision-making – which the LibDems want to abolish – and replace with a Committee System, like the one at Cambridgeshire County Council.

Cllr Sandford added: “A Committee System enables more elected members to be involved in the decision-making process – helping to ensure its fairer, with collective accountability across politically balanced committees.

“The Tories could ignore the hunting ban vote if they wanted to; although I hope they don’t as I support the principle, just not the way it’s been arrived at.

“[the LibDems Group] have repeatedly raised proposals for a Committee System over the last ten years as an alternative to the one we currently have in Peterborough.

“We did get the council to set up a working group to examine alternative governance, and while it sat for two years and recommended a hybrid system (part committee and part cabinet), the Tories just threw out those recommendations.”

A number of councils are making informal changes to their governance arrangements including tightening up existing processes, making sure that avenues exist for all members to get involved in the policy development process (for example, through overview and scrutiny), and putting in place consultation arrangements for particularly contentious decisions.

Some councils have decided to go a step further, and revisit their formal governance arrangements, looking at the different decision-making models available to them and taking steps to make a legal change to a different governance system.

Just this week, Cheshire East Council backed a move to change to a Committee System form of governance, replacing their current Leader and Cabinet model.

The ‘Leader and Cabinet’ system, as used by Peterborough City Council, was introduced by the Local Government Act 2000, and is the most common form of governance.

In some councils, individual members of the cabinet have decision-making powers; in others, decisions have to be made by the whole cabinet.

Cabinet is led by a leader, who is elected by full council for a term determined by the council itself or on a four-yearly basis (and will usually be the leader of the largest party on the council).

Councils which conduct business under this model are required to have at least one overview and scrutiny committee.

Opposition and backbench councillors can sometimes feel excluded from the decision-making process under this system.

It favours a majority party, which Peterborough City Council has under the Conservatives; but, where that majority is slim, or there is political diversity, the councils may look to consider an alternative system of governance.

Under the ‘Committee System’, proposed by Cllr Sandford, and used by Cambridgeshire County Council, the council is divided into politically balanced committees that make the decisions.

As such, these councils are not required to have an overview and scrutiny committee, though some do have one or more.

A committee system does inherently give a louder voice to minority parties and Independents, since each committee is made up of members from all groups.

Some standalone independent councillors have found themselves excluded from committees through proportionality arrangements during committee appointments; however, councils could offer them a seat on one, two or even more committees.

For this reason, the LGA Independent Group does advise its members to be part of formal groupings within councils, even if proportionality on committees is the only thing the group works together on.

There is a third way of decision making, and this is to be found in the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, known as the ‘Mayoral System’.

The Combined Authority mayoral system functions under Metro Mayor, James Palmer, who was directly elected in 2017, by the people living in the local authority area.

Mayor Palmer has a wide range of decision-making abilities similar to those of the executive committee in a Leader and Cabinet model.

The mayor then appoints his cabinet of councillors, who may also have their own decision-making powers, but this system must also have at least one overview and scrutiny committee.

In some areas, councillors have complained about the perceived excessive power of directly elected mayors; accusations that have been levelled at Mayor Palmer on more than one occasion.

Cllr Sandford went on to say: “I don’t support mayoral systems as they put even more power in the hands of fewer people: The Liberal way is to spread power, not to concentrate it.

“The concentration of power in the hands of a few, and the secrecy at Peterborough City Council are the source of a lot of our current problems – we even have a climate change working group that meets in secret; yet they’re charged with discussing the biggest issue facing our planet for hundreds of years.”

Overall, no one system is intrinsically better than another, with all three systems of power managed so that they must be democratic, accountable and work in the interests of the people they represent.