Councillor Call for Action (CCfA)

Background

The Councillor Call for Action was introduced through  The Police and Justice Act 2006  and the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, with implementation expected by local authorities in April 2008. This new duty is expected to give support to all councillors to raise matters of concern for their constituents and for Overview and Scrutiny to contribute to the community leadership role of the council. 

Overview and Scrutiny is expected to have a new locality focus with the increased potential for area based scrutiny reviews. The practical implications for local authorities, and their partners (see below), has only recently begun to be considered. A few authorities have started to introduce area based scrutiny and others have started to consider how to introduce CCfA for their authorities.

Outline of CCfA

The Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007,amended section 19 of the Police and Justice Act 2006 – before it had come into force – to align it with the provision in section 119 of the 2007 Act. All councillors are thus empowered to refer local government matters and local crime and disorder matters for consideration by the relevant overview and scrutiny committees of their local authorities. According to a recent posting on the CLG website this is to be seen as a 'last resort' where all other processes have failed. 

The result amounts to a “councillor call for action”. Any councillor will be able to refer a local matter affecting his or her ward or division to the appropriate overview and scrutiny committee of his or her authority. In the case of a local crime and disorder matter, that will be to the authority’s crime and disorder committee.

The committee is required then to put the matter on its agenda, and discuss it at a meeting. It is not to be required to take any further action; but all the powers it has – to mount inquiries, to require information, and to make reports and recommendations – are to be available to it, if it decides to take the matter up.

The power to refer a matter is available only where the matter is of direct concern to the ward or division which the councillor represents. A councillor can refer a matter even if no citizen has asked him or her to consider it. There is no requirement for councillors in multi-member wards to agree – any of them can refer a matter.

A local crime and disorder matter, in relation to a member of a local authority, has been defined to mean a matter concerning:

(i) crime and disorder (including in particular forms of crime and disorder that involve anti-social behaviour or other behaviour adversely affecting the local environment), or

(ii) the misuse of drugs, alcohol and other substances that affects the electoral area represented by the member, or the people who live or work in that area.

Some local issues have implications in more than one field. In such a case, the councillor would be entitled to refer it to every overview and scrutiny committee which covers some aspect of the issue. In practice, committees will, no doubt, take the sensible decision to join forces in order to consider such matters in the round.

General principles underpinning the  new duty

Consultation on the finer detail of the new duty have been consulted on (closing date 20 March 2008) and will be published in June 2008. However, the overall principles are below.

The Government believes that there should be a duty on local authorities to respond to petitions in the following circumstances:

(a) The subject of the petition relates to the functions of the local authority, or other public services with shared delivery responsibilities with the local authority through the Local Area Agreement or other partnership arrangement

Local authorities have a wide range of functions, which include the promotion of the social, environmental and economic wellbeing of the area and its people. They are the “place shapers” for their area, and this has been reinforced by provisions of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, which require a list of partner organisations to cooperate with the local authority in developing the Sustainable Community Strategy for the area, and in setting local improvement targets. The role of local authorities has also been reinforced by the Sub National Review published in July 2007.

The Government’s proposal is that local authorities should be required to respond to any petition that asks them to consider any issue which falls within their broad functions as outlined above. Petitions which would more properly be dealt with by another public body – and raise issues which relate neither to local improvement targets agreed by that body, nor to the area’s sustainable community strategy – would fall outside the proposed new duty.

An important example of this principle will arise in the context of education services. A local authority would not be required to respond to a petition which raises issues which can only be addressed substantively by the governors and head-teacher of a particular school. On the other hand, the duty would apply where the petition relates to the education functions of the local authority.

(b) The petition has been organised by a local person

It is proposed that there should be nothing to prevent local petitioners from invoking the help of national organisations having wider interests – but that the organiser of‑record of a local petition should be a local person. It is that person who should present the petition to the local authority.

Options are:

i) a person appearing in the electoral register for the local authority’s area

ii) any adult who lives or works in the area at the time the petition is submitted, or

iii) any adult who has lived or worked in the area for at least a qualifying period of time before the petition is submitted.

(c) The petition demonstrates a sufficient level of support from local people

On the one hand, requiring local authorities to respond to all petitions, even those with a minimum level of support, could impose unnecessary processes and costs. On the other, setting a very high level of support as a requirement for a petition to receive a formal response would frustrate the underlying purpose of the policy. There are three possible approaches to setting a threshold of a sufficient level of support.

They are to define:

i) in absolute terms the number of relevant signatories that a qualifying petition must have (for example, “at least 250 signatures”); or

ii) a qualifying petition as one that has the signatures of a given proportion of those whose signatures are regarded as relevant (for example, at least 1 per cent of the electorate of the area in question). This could make it difficult for the petition organiser to know how many signatures were required for the petition to be valid; or

iii) an absolute number, or a given proportion of the population, whichever is the lower (for example. “200 signatures or 5 per cent of the population” would mean that communities of less than 4,000 people would have to find fewer than 200 signatures).

Signatures

A “relevant” signature could be regarded as that either of:

i) an elector of the area; or

ii) anyone who lives or works in the area.

Support would have to be reasonably current (eg signature within the last 12 months).

(d) The petition satisfies minimum requirements in relation to

i) The manner in which it was submitted

ii) its form

iii) its content

It is proposed that petitioners ought to be able to present their petitions either to the council, or to one of its councillors.

Councils and their councillors would be under a general duty to consider whether any request or document they receive is a petition. The government would hope to avoid technicalities here. The word “petition” would, Is Intended to have 'a plain English meaning'; and government currently do not intend to seek to define it in statute. Where a council or councillor is of the view that a document is a petition, that decision would trigger the petition provisions.

A petition should at least contain:

i) the proposition which it promotes

ii) the name and address of the organiser

iii) the local authority from which a response is sought (and, if more than one, all the local authorities to which it has been submitted)

iv) the area to which it relates (ie the whole authority, or a defined area forming part of it)

v) the names, addresses and signatures of those who support it (or, in the case of an electronic petition, their names, addresses and email addresses).