Report No. 200/2017 was received from the Monitoring Officer, the purpose of which was to approve the amendment of the constitution in order to clarify rules regarding speaking at Full Council in relation to referrals under Procedure Rule 110 and approve updates to the Public Speaking Scheme.

Mrs Mogg, Director for Resources and Monitoring Officer, gave a brief introduction highlighting the need to clarify the rules so there was a clear distinction between rules on public speaking where a planning application had been referred to Council and rules on public speaking where the planning application had not previously been heard by the Planning and Licensing Committee.  A small amendment was also required in order to clarify the rules regarding inappropriate language and/or behaviour and the right of the Chair to order a member of the public be excluded from the meeting.

Mr Mathias moved the recommendations in the report and Mr Stewart seconded the recommendations.

During debate of the recommendations points raised included:

1. MrConde asked for clarification regarding the powers of the Chair in removing a person from the meeting for unacceptable behaviour.  Mrs Mogg confirmed that procedure rules in the RCC Constitution do allow for a member of the public to be requested to leave a meeting for unacceptable language and/or behaviour and highlighted the importance of the Chair working together with the Clerk to deal with these sorts of situations in the most appropriate way;
2. MrBool added that the Chairman of a meeting may also adjourn the meeting in order to allow the situation to calm down, but that it was difficult to write rules which would cover every eventuality; and
3. Mr Baines confirmed that this type of occurrence was actually quite rare and that the Chairman would always need to use his/her judgment to react in the most appropriate way having regard to the powers at his disposal under the rules.

RESOLVED

1)    To APPROVE the amendment of Procedure Rule 28 (4)(a) of the RCC Constitution as detailed in Appendix A of Report No. 200/2017; and

2)    To APPROVE the amendment of the RCC Public Speaking Scheme as detailed at para. 2.4 of Report No. 200/2017.