Issue - meetings

To confirm the minutes of the meeting held on 19 January 2023 as a correct record.

The Chair raised that a point from the minutes regarding member appointments to charities had not been addressed on the agenda.

The Committee Manager provided the following statement:

“Please accept my apologies for the oversight regarding this item.

At the last meeting, a councillor requested that the history of member appointments to charities (or one charity in particular) be looked in to and reported on at the next meeting.

Trustee appointments to charities are set out in the governing document for the charity, the charity scheme. Some of these documents were written nearly a hundred years ago, and some have been updated more recently. These can be found on the charity’s website through the charity commission, and Committee Services usually hold a copy for each of the charities the Council appoints to.

Each of these schemes contains a paragraph which stipulates the trustees that must be appointed to the charity. Sometimes these trustees must hold a certain position (such as the vicar of a particular parish), or meet specific criteria. The charity may nominate a councillor for appointment as a trustee, but it is not obligated to do so unless such a requirement is set out in their scheme. No charity that this Council appoints to has a requirement in its scheme that a trustee must be a councillor.

Any changes to a charity’s scheme would need to be agreed by the charity and have the charity commission’s approval. The Council has no powers to require that a scheme be changed.”

The Monitoring Officer raised that at the Council meeting on 23 February 2023, it had been identified that there were no procedural rules in place regarding the appointment of trustees to charities. The Monitoring Officer suggested this would be reviewed and added to the forward plan.

The minutes of the meeting held on 19 January 2023 were agreed as a correct record.