Agenda item

The following question had been submitted by Councillor Tony Riordan for response by the Leader of the Council (Councillor Bob Cook):-

“The staff in Democratic Services had kindly provided members and officers with the dates of the Full Council Meetings, for the Municipal Year 2024/25 entering them into the diary as long ago as May 2023. This was greatly appreciated by members and officers as they could plan their other commitments, holidays, work, etc, around those dates.

Prior to the publication of the agenda for the last Annual Council Meeting on the 3rd of April, the date of the subsequent meeting of Full Council was last week, the 22nd of May, and had been for over a year.

Once this agenda was published, it became apparent that last week’s diary date, the 22nd of May, had been changed to today, the 29th of May.

I am informed that the date of the meeting was changed on the instruction of the Council Leader.

Can the Leader of the Council please provide members with the reason(s) he instructed that the well-established diary date of the 22nd of May was changed to today?”

The Leader of the Council responded with:-

“Thank you, Cllr Riordan, for your question.

Firstly, it's important to clarify that setting the dates for Full Council meetings is not the responsibility of officers. The schedule of meetings is proposed at the Annual Meeting each year and voted on by all members. Any member can propose amendments during that meeting.

As Leader of the Council, whilst I can propose how our business is conducted, including proposals on meeting dates to be put to a meeting, the final decision is made democratically by all members at the Annual Meeting. The dates in the democracy diary before then are only indicative.

The change from the 22nd to the 29th of May was raised and agreed upon collectively at the Annual Meeting, not decided by me. If there were any objections, they could have been raised then.”

Councillor Tony Riordan asked the following supplementary question:-

“The proposed date was changed prior to the Annual Meeting on your instruction, can you clarify that?”

The Leader of the Council responded with:-

“The dates are set at the Annual Meeting and are not set by officers. The dates are voted upon and are an agenda item at the Annual Meeting. There were no objections to the dates and the change of date and I can clarify that the dates had not been set until the Annual Meeting.”

The following question had been submitted by Councillor Tony Riordan for response by the Leader of the Council (Councillor Bob Cook):-

“The Leader will be aware that on the 24th of January 2024, this Council debated a motion that, in part, related to Stockton Hotels Company Ltd (Hampton by Hilton).

The motion was carried and (in part) read,

1.         To request Stockton Hotels Company Limited to provide copies of its profit and loss accounts so that this Council can publish them.

2.         To request Stockton Hotels Company Limited to provide copies of its Directors Reports, so that this Council can publish them.

Can the Leader please inform members when the very simple task of compiling these previously written and retained documents, and publishing them, will be?”

The Leader of the Council responded with:-

“Thank you, Councillor Riordan, for your question. There are two key parts to address: the provision of information by the hotel company to the council and the subsequent publication of that information.

First, regarding the provision of information, the council requested documents from the company directors, who must, by law, act independently of the council. These documents were provided, and any council member who requested to see them is able to. The independent auditors were consulted to determine what information the company must provide to the council to meet its obligations.

The second part concerns the publication of these documents. Once the information was provided, the council needed to decide how to publish it. As you are aware, from March of this year, we entered the pre-election period for the Tees Valley Mayor and Police and Crime Commissioner elections. During this time, the code of practice on publicity prohibits the council from publishing any information that could be deemed political. Given that the hotels success has not been approached in this chamber in a bi-partisan way, publishing this information during the pre-election period would have contravened the pre-election advice from the monitoring officer. Therefore, we had to wait until after the elections to proceed with publication.

Additionally, the council has obligations to ensure that any published information is accessible, such as through screen readers and other assistive technologies. We cannot simply publish unprepared documents on our website without meeting these accessibility standards. This work has now been completed, and the additional documentation is available on the council’s website. These documents will also be included in our regular schedule of published information under our publicity scheme.”