April’s Full Council meeting cancelled

The proposed meeting of full council in April 2014 has been cancelled because there are no urgent items of business on the agenda. 

Council Speaker, Councillor David Lloyd, said there was no need to call all 74 councillors to Shirehall on 10 April 2014, as the only item on the agenda could wait until the May meeting. 

This would save money and make the best use of council resources, he said. 

Councillor Lloyd added:

“Full Council meetings are held so councillors can discuss and vote on council policy and business. 

“As there is only one non-urgent item proposed for the agenda in April, I think it makes sense to save bringing councillors from all corners of the county to Shirehall and defer the item to the May meeting. 

“I appreciate that council meetings offer an opportunity for members of the public to speak to councillors, but we do not have any expressions of interest for the April meeting, and there are lots of ways for people to contact their councillor if they do have any urgent issues.” 

Like many other councils, Shropshire Council operates under a “Cabinet” model, which means that the majority of day-to-day decisions are made by the Cabinet, made up of the Leader of the Council and associated senior councillors, known as Cabinet members, who are each responsible for a particular portfolio, such as children’s services or adult services. 

Full council is when all 74 councillors meet and, according to the constitution, “decide the council’s budget and policy framework”.  There are no rules which state how often full council should meet, just that certain policies need to be approved by full council. 

There are more details about what these policies are in “part 2, article 4” of the council’s constitution (pages B6 to B8 in the following link) – https://shropshire.gov.uk/media/492767/02-part-2-articles-of-the-constitution.pdf.