Councillor Pat Hackett introduced a report which provided details of amendments he had made as the Leader of the Council, to the Scheme of Delegation of Executive Functions, effective immediately in and from 1 September 2019.

The Cabinet was reminded that the Council had adopted a Leader and Cabinet executive form of governance. Following the end of the term of office of the Member holding the position of Leader (every fourth year or less), the Council had elected the Leader of the Council at its Annual Meeting. At the last Annual Meeting of Council, Councillor Pat Hackett had been elected as Leader for the period ending with the Annual Meeting of May 2023 (subject to the provisions of the Constitution and any change in the Council’s governance arrangements that may affect it).

The Cabinet was also reminded that the Leader must appoint a Deputy Leader and up to eight other Members to form the Executive, in respect of which the Council used the term ‘Cabinet’.

It was noted that Article 7.06 (The Cabinet) of Part 2 of the Council’s Constitution concerned the responsibility for functions. This provided that:

“(i) The Leader may discharge any executive function, or

(ii) may arrange for the discharge of any of those functions –

(a) by the Cabinet;

(b) by any Cabinet Member;

(c) by a committee of the Cabinet;

(d) by area committee; or

(e) by an officer of the authority.”

The means by which these functions were allocated were set out in a Leader’s Scheme of Delegation. The current Scheme was published as Table 3 of Part 3 of the Council’s Constitution, together with a schedule of delegation of functions to individual Cabinet Members (3k - Schedule 5) and to individual officers (3j - Schedule 4B).

Appended to the Cabinet report was a replacement Leader’s Scheme of Delegation and Procedure. This included, at Appendix C, the named appointments of Deputy Leader and the remaining Members of the Cabinet and a description of their Portfolios of responsibility. This was of immediate effect.

The Cabinet noted that the key changes between the existing Scheme and this were:

(a) The introduction of a clear hierarchy of decision making through the setting of financial limits to delegated decisions, which in summary was that:

(i)   officers may only take decisions up to a financial value of £1.5M; beyond which

(ii)   individual Cabinet Members may only take decisions up to a financial value of £5M; and all other decisions beyond that must be taken by the Cabinet as a collective meeting.

(b) Individual Cabinet Member decisions were to be subject to a set of rules regarding how and when they may take those decisions, including what advice and material must be before the Cabinet Member at that time. Existing rules concerning the reporting of those decisions, including that all such decisions were normally subject to call-in, were included for ease of reference.

(c)   Cabinet decisions were likewise subject to those rules, but additionally would include  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7