Issue - meetings

The report seeks authorisation to respond to Highways England with a corporately preferred option for the proposed improvements on the Arundel section of the A27 Trunk Road. It sets the reasons why Highways England has opted for a second non-statutory consultation, outlines the options put forward in the current consultation; and the issues identified as being pertinent to the various options.

            The Chairman invited the Chief Executive to make a statement.

            The Chief Executive outlined that all Members of the Council were sent an email on 8 October 2019 advising them that the recommendations in the Officer’s report issued with the agenda were being withdrawn and were being replaced with revised recommendations which had been provided and published to the Council’s website that same day.

            The decision had been made to take this action based on concerns raised with him by the Council’s Group Leaders about the wording of the recommendations in the Officer’s report.  The Chief Executive believed that the revised recommendations allowed greater transparency and would allow for a more democratic debate to take place on all the options put forward by Highways England (HE) for the A27 improvements at Arundel.  A copy of the Chief Executive’s statement issued including the revised recommendations had been circulated to the meeting.

            The Chief Executive then explained the process that would be followed for the meeting. He confirmed that:

·         It was in order for an Officer recommendation to be revised and withdrawn right up to the time it was due to be considered by Members.  This was because at a Council meeting, an officer recommendation only became the subject of debate once it had been proposed and seconded by two separate Members.

·         In terms of the officer recommendations now before Members, if proposed and seconded, the Chairman intended to request that each recommendation be debate and voted on individually.  This meant that:

o   If the Council supported Recommendations (1) and (2) then there would be no further discussion on the options put forward by HE.

o   If recommendation (1) was not supported, then the Council would debate all the options in the consultation document as set out in Recommendation (3) then allowing all Members to have the opportunity to vote on each option.  The vote on each option would be recorded.

o   If there was support by a majority for one of the options, then Recommendation (4) sought approval to this option being presented as the Council’s response to HE.  It was explained that if there was not an overall majority for one option, then the Council would be able to consider ranking the options.

o   Members would then consider Recommendation (5).

·           Throughout the debate, Members would have the opportunity to propose further amendments in line with Council Procedure Rule 16.7.

            The Chief Executive confirmed that to support and inform debate, all Councillors had been provided with the Officer report setting out the technical assessment of the options; the opportunity to participate in a briefing provided by HE on 24 September 2019 or to attend one of the community-based exhibitions; and a copy of the full consultation documents from HE.

            Finally, the Chief Executive alerted Councillors to an error on Page 29 of the Officer report at Paragraph 1.1.4 in which the option 4/5AV2 (Magenta) should read (Amber) and the ‘emerging Local Plan’ had been referred to in the Officer’s report, as  ...  view the full minutes text for item 264