Report No: 51/2021 and Report No: 42/2021

Before moving to consider the exclusion of the public and press, the Chairman invited the Monitoring Officer to advise Council on why they were being asked to move into private session. This was also to ensure that members of the public who were watching understood the reason for the motion and the advice given to Councillors.

The Monitoring Officer advised that Council should move into private session as the information in the agreement that Council was being asked to make a decision on was confidential within the meaning of Paragraph 3 of Part 1 of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972. Both Homes England and the DIO had told Council that release of the information that would be the subject of the debate could harm their commercial interests. The information had been supplied on the basis that it was confidential and the Council would be in breach of this confidentiality to discuss the detail in public.

Council was being asked whether or not to enter into the agreements and would therefore necessarily have to discuss the detail in order to ensure that regard of all the evidence that was material to the decision being made had been had. Should Council choose not to go into exempt session then Council would not be able to discuss, for example, details of the cashflow, milestones other than the 2024 date, the recovery strategy, and specifics on the agreement of risk. A previously public meeting had debated the principles of such an agreement and it was concluded that Council would need to consider the detail in order to make an informed decision.

The Monitoring Officer made a final point for his reasoning and strong advice that the issue should move into confidential session and that was that, while individual councillors might be of the view that what they wanted to say could be done in open session, this was unlikely to be the case for all councillors.

Following the advice given, the Chairman confirmed that he and the Monitoring Officer had held lengthy discussions to explore any way in which the decision could be held in public however there was no doubt that the position of Homes England and the MOD would preclude Council from doing this and therefore he felt that there was no other option but to move into private session.

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The motion to move into confidential session was proposed by Councillor Walters and seconded by Councillor Ainsley.

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Councillor Bool addressed Members at this point to express his concern that Council was attempting to go into private session so early on in the debate especially as so many members of the public were observing. Councillor Bool wondered whether or not there were other hidden issues because he felt that the issue had started in secrecy four years ago, when the previous Chief Executive had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which was then kept secret from 24 of the 26 councillors for an entire year, and would be ending in secrecy. As the matter affected everyone in Rutland Councillor Bool argued that the public should be allowed to see their elected representatives discussing the issues, especially as he felt that the debate could be conducted in a manner that adhered to the Council’s obligations under the Non-Disclosure Agreement.

The Chairman concurred with comments that Councillor Bool had made about the secrecy surrounding the MOU and considered that the Leader of the Council at that time had betrayed an arrogance that was more in keeping with the powers of an elected Mayor. He urged Members however to move on from the past and to think of the future.

Councillor A Brown who was conscious that the vote to go into private session would be very close, then cited the case of Bradford Metropolitan City Council ex parte, Wilson and others 1989 in which it was held that there was no requirement for a Chair to remain impartial, nor a requirement to support the status quo and that they had a duty to act honestly and in accordance with their perception of the public interest. In Councillor Brown’s opinion the huge public interest in the issue outweighed the commercial sensitivity arguments put forward by the DIO and Homes England.

The Monitoring Officer reiterated that Members were required to have a regard to the advice provided which highlighted that Council would be in breach of the confidentiality agreement that they had in place with Homes England and the DIO, and that this was an extremely material fact.

Councillor Waller was sympathetic to the pressures officers were under, having been told the papers were confidential but as there had already been three private sessions and over 100 questions answered, considered that Members could debate the overview rather than the minutiae and therefore the meeting could remain in public session.

Councillor G Brown supported going into exempt session as he would be making opening remarks that contained additional confidential information that had come about in the last few days.

The Monitoring Officer clarified that the meeting would not be moved back into public session to hear the voting as it was impossible to predict the nature and number of any amendments which could mean going in and out of private/ public session.  As soon as the vote was taken however the RCC Comms team would make the result known via social media channels.

Councillor Walters, who had proposed the motion, argued that Councillor Bool’s inference that something underhand could take place were the matter to be held in private session was misplaced as all the elected members would be present to ensure that this was not the case.

Councillor G Brown addressed points made by Councillors Cross and MacCartney in regard to the additional confidential items that he would be speaking about and confirmed that they had been presented at the end of the previous week and therefore were very recent.