1. Background
The Local Government and Housing Act 1989, placed a duty on a relevant authority to review the representations of the different political groups on that body. Such a review should generally take place:
- at, or as soon as practicable after, the Annual Meeting of the relevant authority, or;
- as soon as practicable, where notice is received of a change in the composition of political groups.
Further, there is a duty on that authority “as soon as practicable after the review, to determine the allocation of the different political groups into which the Members of the authority are divided of all the seats which fail to be filled by appointment made from time to time by that authority or committee”. It is therefore incumbent upon the Authority to “review” and “determine” the allocation of seats to political groups. There is no strict requirement on the Authority to consult the political groups as to which Committee seats should be allocated to which group, as this only applies to the actual appointment of Elected Members to particular seats once they are allocated to political groups. However, the Authority over a number of years have held, what is termed as “Round Table” discussions amongst Elected Members on the allocation of seats to Committees, provided these allocations do not conflict with the Authority’s duty “to make only such determinations as give effect, as far as reasonably practicable” with the principles outlined in Section 15(5) of the 1989 Act.
2. The "Principles"
The legislation specifies certain principles in achieving political balance through the allocation as seats, as follows;
- a) That not all the seats on the body are allocated to the same political group;
- b) That the majority of the seats on the body is allocated to a particular group if the number of persons belonging to that group is the majority of the Authority’s membership;
- c) Subject to paragraphs (a) and (b) above, the number of seats on the ordinary Committees of a relevant authority which are allocated to each political group bears the same proportion to the total of all the seats on the ordinary Committees of that authority, as is borne by the number of Elected Members of that group to the membership of the Authority; and
- d) Subject to paragraph (a) to (c) above, that the number of the seats upon a body which are allocated to each political group bears the same proportion to the number of all the seats on that body as is borne by the number of Members of that group to the membership of the Authority.
As indicated the 1989 Act requires, as far as reasonably practicable that decisions are made which conform with the above principles. The First Schedule to the 1989 Act also stipulates that in relation to certain appointments to “prescribed bodies” where “at least three seats” have to be filled by the Authority, the allocation of seats should be in the same proportion as that in which Full Council is itself divided as specified under principle (d) above. In addition, where an Elected Member(s) has been appointed to an “outside body” for a fixed term by Full Council previously, that appointment continues (unless the Elected Member chooses to resign from that position) and is therefore unaffected by the proportionality requirements.
3. Political groups
Under the 1989 Act, a ‘Political Group is treated as being properly constituted when there is delivered to the ‘proper officer’ (the Monitoring Officer) a notice in writing which;
- is signed by two or more Elected Members of the Authority who wish to be treated as a political group; and
- the notice states that the Elected Members of the Authority who have signed it wish to be treated as a political group, the name of the group and the name of one Elected Member of the group who has signed the notice and who is to act as Leader of the group.
A copy of the requisite notice is appended to this Guidance Note. A notice may also specify the name of one other Elected Member of the group who has signed the notice and who is authorised to act in place of the leader when the Leader is unable to act (the Deputy Leader). The name of the group or the name of the Leader or Deputy Leader may also be changed by a further notice in writing duly signed and delivered to the proper officer;
- in the case of a change in the name of the group or the Deputy Leader, by the Leader of the group or a majority of the members of the group;
- in the case of a change in the Leader of the group, by a majority of the members of the Group.
For the avoidance of any doubt, a political group shall cease to be constituted if the number of persons who are to be treated as Members of that group is less than two. An Elected Member of the Authority will be treated as a Member of a political group if;
- he/she has signed a notice in the form attached, or
- he/she has delivered to the proper officer a notice in writing to be signed by him/her and by the Leader and Deputy Leader of the group or by a majority of the Members of the group, that he/she wishes to join the group. Conversely, a person will be treated as having ceased to be a member of that group when that Elected Member(s) has notified the proper officer in writing that they no longer wish to be treated as a Member of the group. Further, this would be evidenced where the Member concerned has delivered to the proper officer a notice that the Member has joined a new political group as constituted or joined another established political group or they have delivered to the proper officer a notice in writing signed by the majority of the Members of the group that they no longer wish the Elected Member to be treated as a Member of that political group.
4. Review and allocation of seats
The duty under Section 15 of the 1989 Act is to ‘review’ the representation of the different political groups on the Authority, at certain times as prescribed through legislation. However, where a request is made through a change in the composition of the political groups through formal notice being delivered to the proper officer, such notification should be at least one month after the last review carried out in accordance with the legislation.
Under the Local Government (Committees and Political Groups) Regulations 1990, where a political group fails to express a wish in relation to an appointment to such a seat within a period of three weeks beginning with the date on which notice was given, the Authority or Committee may make such appointment to that seat as they think fit.
5. Exceptions to requirements for Committees to review arrangements for allocation of seats
There are certain exceptions which apply wherein the rules on proportionality do not apply. These cases are limited and are referred to below;
- Area Committees which consist of all Elected Members living in the area which the Committee covers. If it does not, then allocations must be proportionate to the whole Council.
- Any Working Party/Group, Advisory Panel etc. where powers have been delegated to it by a Committee of the Council, not the Council itself.
- A Health and Wellbeing Board as established under the Health and Social Care Act, 2012 (the Board is a ‘Committee’ of the Authority but the 2012 does not apply the 1989 Act provisions).
- Proportionality also does not apply to outside bodies where Full Council simply appoints representatives such as to local voluntary organisations unless statutory criteria apply.
6. Calculating proportionality
The “principles” covering proportionality should be satisfied as is reasonably practicable to do so. Consequently the “principles” are applied as follows;
- There should be no Committees made up of a single political group, unless every Member on the Council is in the same political group.
- Where one political group has a majority, that group should have a majority on all Committees.
- The proportion of Elected Members to Committees should be allocated in proportion to each political group operating within the Authority.
- Places on an individual Committee should be allocated in proportion to each political group on Full Council.
Allocations should therefore be proportionate to the number of seats that each political group has on Full Council, for example if there are 15 Members of a political group on the Full Council which has 36 elected representatives, then 15 seats should be allocated to that political group in every 36. i.e. the number of Elected Members in a political group divided by the number of Elected Members on Full Council. Independent Members who are not aligned to a political group will be ‘grouped’ together for the purposes of the calculations.
No political group should be over represented under point 4 above. Once the principles have been applied, then as stated, each Committee then has to be as proportionate as possible, to ensure that as far as practicable, Committees are representative of the overall makeup of Full Council.
However, the calculations are never in reality exact and so there will always be some negotiation amongst Elected Members, particularly where a group is under represented on one Committee but is over represented on another. This allows the opportunity for agreement through the ‘Round Table’ discussions, or alternatively, through a formal decision to be made through to Full Council.
In accordance with the Council Procedure Rules, appointments to Committees will be made at the Annual Meeting of Full Council. The appointment of the Chair and Vice Chair positions (Ceremonial Mayor and Deputy Ceremonial Mayor respectively) which by legislation are appointments reserved to the Annual Meeting will also take place. Any appointments that are contested will be determined at the Annual Meeting applying the voting procedures as set out in the Council Procedure Rules.