Public Petitions at the County Council

Last week at the county council meeting it was decided by the Conservative ruling group that petitions from the public to bring a debate to council would need nearly 16,000 signatures. It was also decided that to bring a chief officer to account at a scrutiny committee would need 4000 signatures. Our group put forward an amendment asking that the numbers be reduced to 500 each, but this was thrown out. Read the news story here. This does not of course, prevent petitions being presented to the County Council which will continue as it does now. However, most petitions do not trigger a debate but are simply passed to the directorate for a response.