Understanding substantive motions in Bodmin.

I attended a training session led by Sarah Mason, County Executive Officer of the Cornwall Association of Local Councils (CALC), in Bodmin on 17th July. It was about chairmanship skills for parish council meetings - the role, the preparation, rules and standing orders, and the skills required.

Shire House, Bodmin

It was a lot more useful than I had anticipated. Although quite a dry subject - and the PowerPoint wasn't working - the subjects covered were very relevant to our meetings. Even though we have a relatively small budget and population in Grampound with Creed we need to strive to make clear decisions that are legal and, hopefully, sensible. Also it was useful to talk to other chairs, vice-chairs and even a deputy mayor about shared challenges; lengths of meetings, understanding the precise rules of debate, getting an efficient agenda, and knowing the difference between an amendment and a substantive motion. [A substantive motion is the one that is finally voted on - after all the amendments have been dealt with].

Finally there were a couple of points which may be useful to bring up at future parish council meetings to see what council thought:

• Many councils have a statement in their standing orders to restrict the time a particular chair may expect to stay in post. Although the law states that an election is undertaken each year there is often the practice that the person in post tends to get re-elected. The feeling at the session was that restricting this expectation was generally a good thing allowing diversity of opinion within councils and sharing of the workload. It is worded in a way that says something like 'a chair would not normally be elected for more than 2 consecutive years'.
• Bigger, busier, councils tend to have more sub-committees to delegate work and decision making to.
• Some councils have a 'staffing sub-committee' to allow for two tiers of decision making in the unlikely event of an appeal.
• Some councils have their public participation session (public forum) after the members' declarations of interest.