Full Council Meeting

Thursday night (27th November) was the full Council Meeting at the Guildhall. The meeting started at 6.30pm and finished at 10.00pm.As usual much hot air was generated with a range of proposals which entailed writing to various Government Ministers on issues ranging from housing to commercial council tax on vacant commercial property. For me the highlight of the meeting was my success in getting a much more robust scrutiny structure agreed by Council, which will be effected in May next year. Scrutiny is a powerful tool in holding the Executive to account, it is also a means of ensuring that the Policies adopted by the Council are working. The process of scrutiny is conducted by those members of the Council who are not members of the Executive, in other words scrutiny is owned by such members and members involved in the scrutiny of any issue are not directed their group to follow a party line. I would hope that as the scrutiny structure is developed a mechanism will be introduced for any resident of York to request an issue to be considered for scrutiny.