This week I went to the December council meeting

I voted for:
– a motion proposed by the Lib Dems and Newcastle Independents asking that all local residents should be sent a letter telling them about their annual ward committee meeting. (This used to happen but was stopped without consulting councillors.)~
– a motion proposed by the Lib Dems asking for a report on unspent Section 106 funding (this is money that developers pay towards community infrastructure)
– a motion proposed by Labour in support of Unison’s Stars in our Schools campaign celebrating school support staff.
– a motion proposed by Labour on ethical investment and procurement and divesting from any companies enabling or profiting from genocide and/or illegal occupation.
The two Labour motions were passed, the others were not.
I also voted in favour of ‘suspending the guillotine’. This means that the meeting could have gone on past 8:30pm. The Labour councillors voted against this. (Labour no longer has a majority but there were a lot of councillors missing and they had more councillors in the meeting.)

I asked a question that I had submitted in advance about the Council’s Customer Commitment:
Cabinet recently agreed a new ‘Customer Commitment’ as part of a ‘benchmark for delivering services’. Do Councillor Frew and his cabinet colleagues agree that residents are stakeholders in the city as well as customers? If so, what commitments are they making to ensure that residents are fully informed about council decisions and decision-making processes?
Coun Kilgour responded and outlined what informatiion the council is required to share with residents. She said that it does not share infromation that is ‘commercially sensitive’. There are some legal restrictions on sharing commercially sensitive information but I’m concerned that it is being used in Newcastle to restrict discussion of council decisions, e.g. How much the council paid to host the Mercury Prize. I asked the Council’s Head of Legal Services for clarification back in June and received this response:
“A report may be exempted from publication where it is considered that it is likely, in view of the nature of the business to be transacted, that exempt information would be disclosed.  In this instance the decision maker considered that due to the commercially sensitive nature of the information the exception under Schedule 12A to the LGA 1972 was engaged. As set out in the charter at 4B 10.4 ‘Exempt information’ means information falling within those categories listed, being in this instance “..3. Information relating to the financial or business affairs of any particular person (including the authority holding that information).”
So the person making the decision also made the decision to keep it confidential.