The General Purposes Committee met to discuss the ongoing review and redrafting of the council's constitution, agreeing to a revised timetable for its approval. The committee noted the progress of Phase 2 of the review, which includes significant changes to the structure, content, and accessibility of the constitution. A final version of the constitution is expected to be submitted to the committee at its next meeting, before going to the Full Council in March for adoption.

Constitution Review: Phase 2 Update

The committee reviewed the second phase of work to modernise the council's constitution, a project being carried out by the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny (CfGS) under the direction of the Monitoring Officer and members of the Constitutional Review Working Group (CRWG).

The council constitution sets out how the council operates, how decisions are made, and the procedures that are followed to ensure efficiency, transparency and accountability¹.

The review's first phase, which was reported to the committee on 3 June 2025, identified areas where urgent changes were needed. Phase 2 involves a more comprehensive review and redraft of the entire document.

A change log was provided, summarising the major proposed changes, including:

• Reorganising the document into six parts, thematically organising the roles/rights of the public and councillors.
• Reducing the length of articles and moving content to other parts of the constitution.
• Reworking the section on access to information to better describe members' rights to access information in common law.
• Expanding the description of arrangements for petitions and deputations.
• Introducing new procedures for laying amendments to the budget at council.
• A fuller description of the principles underpinning officer decision-making.

The report noted that the review includes changes to language around the rights of the public to ask questions in formal meetings. While preserving the right for chairs of meetings to take questions without notice, the changes clarify that this will ordinarily occur only in exceptional circumstances.

The committee agreed to a new timetable for the constitution's approval, with the final version to be submitted to the next General Purposes Committee meeting on 12 February 2026, and then to the Full Council on 26 March. This delay from the originally planned schedule was considered necessary to ensure that the proposed changes have been subject to full member oversight, and to provide the opportunity for any changes arising from the ongoing review of scrutiny and policy development committees to be reflected in the new draft.

Minutes from the Previous Meeting

The committee approved the minutes from the meeting held on 23 July 2025.