Petitions Scheme

What are the guidelines for submitting a petition?

Petitions submitted to the Council must include:

• a clear and concise statement covering the subject of the petition. It should state what action the petitioners wish the Council to take
• the name and address and signature of any person supporting the petition. Petitions should be accompanied by contact details, including an address, for the petition organiser. This is the person we will contact to explain how we will respond to the petition. The contact details of the petition organiser will not be placed on the Council’s website
• an indication of whether it is intended to be

A local petition - a minimum of 20 signatures required.

An ordinary petition – a minimum of 100 signatures required

A petition holding an officer to account (you must specify the name of the officer) – a minimum of 2000 signatures

A petition forcing debate at a full Council meeting – a minimum of 3000 signatures required

People signing the petition must either live, work or study in the Borough and may not sign a petition more than once.

If a petition does not follow the guidelines set out above, the Council may decide not to do anything further with it. In that case, we will write to you to explain the reasons.

Exemptions

The Council reserves the right to reject petitions which:

• are not concerned with an issue which affects the Borough or do not raise matters over which the Authority has responsibility or has some influence;
• are defamatory, illegal, scurrilous, frivolous, offensive, out of order or relate to a specific licensing or planning application;
• relate to substantially the same issue / subject as a petition which has been received by the Authority in the last 12 months;
• request the Council to do something which conflicts with Council policy.  

If you wish to raise issues of possible Borough or Parish councillor misconduct under the Members’ Code of Conduct and the Local Government Act 2000 then you should do this via the formal member complaint process. Details of how you can do this, the process and a complaint form are available on the Council’s website at http://www.charnwood.gov.uk/pages/complaints3289 . You can telephone the Monitoring Officer for advice on this process on 01509 634699.

Duplicate petitions - if more than one petition is received in time for a particular meeting, each supporting the same outcome on one matter, each petition organiser will be treated as an independent petition organiser but only the petition organiser of the first petition will be invited to address the meeting.

If the petition applies to a planning or licensing application, is a statutory requirement (for example, requesting a referendum on having an elected mayor), or is on a matter where there is already an existing right of appeal, such as Council Tax banding and non-domestic rates, other procedures apply.

If your petition is about something that a different council or other organisation is responsible for, the Council will give consideration to what the best method is for responding to it. This might consist of simply forwarding the petition to the other Council, but could involve other steps. In any event, the Council will always notify you of what action has been taken.

If the Council rejects a petition for any of these reasons, then we will notify you of the rejection and tell you the reasons why.

What will the Council do when it receives my petition?

An acknowledgement will be sent to the petition organiser within 10 working days of receiving a completed petition. It will let them know what we plan to do with the petition and when they can expect to hear from us again. It will also be published on our website.

If we can do what your petition asks for, the acknowledgement may confirm that we have taken the action requested and the petition will be closed. If the petition has enough signatures to trigger a Council debate, or a senior officer being held to account, then the acknowledgment will confirm this and tell you when and where the meeting will take place. If the petition needs more investigation, we will tell you the steps we plan to take.

To ensure that people know what we are doing in response to the petitions we receive the details of all the petitions submitted to us will be published on our website, except in cases where this would be inappropriate.

How will the Council respond to petitions?

Our response to a petition will depend on what a petition asks for and how many people have signed it, but may include one or more of the following:

• taking the action requested in the petition
• considering the petition at a Council meeting
• holding an inquiry into the matter
• undertaking research into the matter
• holding a public meeting
• holding a consultation
• holding a meeting with petitioners
• referring the petition for consideration by the Council’s Cabinet or appropriate scrutiny committee
• writing to the petition organiser setting out our views about the request in the petition

If your petition is about something over which the Council has no direct control (for example the local railway or hospital) we will consider making representations on behalf of the community to the relevant body. If this is the case, we will let you know. The Council works with a large number of local partners and where possible will work with these partners to respond to your petition. If we are not able to do this for any reason, then we will set out the reasons for this to you.

Full Council debates:

If a petition contains more than 3000 signatures it will be debated by the full Council (unless it is a petition asking for a senior Council officer to give evidence at a public meeting). This means that the issue raised in the petition will be discussed at a meeting which all Councillors can attend. The Council will endeavour to consider the petition at its next meeting, although on some occasions this may not be possible and consideration will then take place at the following meeting. The petition organiser will be given five minutes to present the petition at the meeting and the petition will then be discussed by Councillors for a maximum of 15 minutes.

The Council will decide how to respond to the petition at this meeting. They may decide to take the action the petition requests, not to take the action requested for reasons put forward in the debate, or to commission further investigation into the matter, for example by a relevant committee.

Where the issue is one where the Council’s Cabinet is required to make the final decision, the Council will decide whether to make recommendations to inform that decision. The petition organiser will receive written confirmation of this decision. This confirmation will also be published on our website.

Officer evidence:

Your petition may ask for a senior Council officer to give evidence at a public meeting about something for which the officer is responsible as part of their job. For example, your petition may ask a senior Council officer to explain progress on an issue, or to explain the advice given to elected members to enable them to make a particular decision.

If your petition is of this nature and contains at least 2000 signatures, the relevant senior officer will give evidence at a public meeting of the Council’s relevant scrutiny committee. If you are unsure which senior officer is responsible for a particular service, please contact Democratic Services.

You should be aware that the scrutiny committee may decide that it would be more appropriate for another officer to give evidence instead of any officer named in the petition – for instance if the named officer has changed jobs. The committee may also decide to call the relevant Councillor to attend the meeting.

E-petitions:

The Council now has a facility for e-petitions to be created and submitted through our website.

The petition organiser will need to provide us with their name, postal address and email address. You will also need to decide how long you would like your petition to be open for signatures, up to a maximum of 6 months. When you create an e-petition, it may take a few days before it is published online. This is because we have to check that the content of your petition is suitable before it is made available for signature.

You may collect and submit signatures as part of a hard-copy petition at the same time as having an e-petition running on the same subject and the totals will be added together. However, care must be taken to ensure that signatures are not duplicated.   

If we feel we cannot publish your petition for some reason, we will contact you and the reason why it has not been accepted will be published under the ‘rejected petitions’ section of the website.

How do I ‘sign’ an e-petition?

There is an e-petitions area of the Council’s website. If someone wishes to sign e-petition you they will have to register and provide their name, postcode and a valid email address. When they have submitted this information they will be sent an email to the email address they have provided. This email will include a link which they must click on in order to confirm the email address is valid. Once this step is complete their ‘signature’ will be added to the petition. People visiting the e-petition will be able to see the names of those who have signed it but their other contact details will not be visible.

What can I do if I feel my petition has not been dealt with properly?

If you feel that we have not dealt with your petition properly, the petition organiser has the right to request that the Council’s Scrutiny Management Board review the steps that the Council has taken in response to your petition. It is helpful to everyone, and can improve the prospects for a review if the petition organiser gives a short explanation of the reasons why the Council’s response is not considered to be adequate. Once the appeal has been considered the petition organiser will be informed of the results within 5 working days. The results of the review will also be published on our website.