Agenda and draft minutes

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The Chair welcomed everyone to the meeting.

The Chair informed the meeting that on advice from Interim Monitoring Officer, and with unanimous agreement from Overview & Scrutiny Committee, North Somerset Council Members which sit on this Committee would be entitled to vote at this meeting.

To receive apologies for absence from Members.

Apologies for absence had been received from Cllr John Ashe, Cllr James Arrowsmith, Cllr Steve Smith and Cllr Peter Crew. 

Cllr Tristan Clark attended as substitute for Cllr Arrowsmith.

Cllr Marcia Pepperall attended as substitute for Cllr Crew.

Cllr Jonathan Hucker attended as substitute for Cllr Smith.

Cllr Paul Hughes attended as substitute for Cllr Ash.

Members who consider that they have an interest to declare are asked to: a) State the item number in which they have an interest, b) The nature of the interest, c) Whether the interest is a disclosable pecuniary interest, non-disclosable pecuniary interest or non-pecuniary interest. Any Member who is unsure about the above should seek advice from the Monitoring Officer prior to the meeting in order to expedite matters at the meeting itself.

There were none.

The Chair informed everyone present that this part of the meeting would run in accordance to Call In order which was circulated in advance of the meeting and attached as Appendix 1 to these minutes.

The Chair invited Cllr Geoff Gollop to address the meeting as the lead Call-In Councillor.

Cllr Geoff Gollop read out a statement (attached as Appendix 2 to these minutes) where he highlighted a background to the Joint Committee Governance Review decision, reasons for the Call In, and what he felt the decision failed to address. Cllr Gollop concluded that these concerns were of cross party and cross authority view.

The Chair invited Cllr Toby Savage to address the meeting as a member of the West of England Joint Committee.

Cllr Toby Savage stated that he welcomed the opportunity to address the Overview and Scrutiny Committee and said that the main purpose of the original report was to review Joint Committee governance arrangements reflecting the fact that it had been a number of years since this was last done.  Cllr Savage recognised that the Overview & Scrutiny Committee did not get a meaningful opportunity to review the Joint Committee governance report in advance of its consideration.  Cllr Savage added that the governance review highlighted confusion around roles and responsibilities that had occurred around decision making during 2021. The secondary purpose of the report had been to welcome and support the working group initiated by the LEP Board.  He denied that any funding for the Joint Committee would be put at risk by this decision and it would be fully compliant with the existing assurance framework having been passed by all four unitary councils’ Monitoring Officers and Chief Executive prior to its original publication.  He stated that the Government’s guidelines on the LEP Boards allowed for a local solution where geographical boundaries did not exactly align and further details of this could be brought forward to the next meeting.    He stated that this report had provided a positive way forward for the working relationships.  He also stated that he believed that this would enhance collaborative working as it was difficult to identify who was accountable for Joint Committee matters currently.  He stated that even if LEP was subsumed into the Mayoral Authority there would still be a positive role for the Joint Committee in determining matters of historical funding, especially in the next three years in the run up to the next Mayoral election when a decision on whether North Somerset would be joining the Authority would be known.

Richard Bonner, Chair of the Local Enterprise Partnership was invited to speak.  He stated that working together to shape the future of the LEP Board was paramount and a working group had been set up to formulate a view as to future expectations.  Each year the Chair of LEP and the CEO of LEP had to sign a declaration that funds had been spent appropriately and through the right processes.  Richard Bonner stated that the was supportive of the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.