Tower Hamlets Constitution

Tower Hamlets Council welcomes petitions and recognises that petitions are one way in which people can let us know their concerns. We will treat something as a petition if it is identified as being a petition, or if it seems to us that it is intended to be a petition.

Paper petitionsare those prepared in the traditional way: a petition organiser creates a paper document that includes a proposed action. Residents physically write their name, address and signature on this document to show their support of the proposed action.

To help you organise a paper petition, the Council has prepared a template that is attached as Appendix 3.

Paper petitions can be sent to the Democratic Services Team using the details provided at Section 7 of this Scheme.

e-Petitionsare created, signed, and submitted entirely online. The petition organiser uses a website to create their petition and residents can electronically add their name via the website to show their support of the action the petition organiser proposes.

It is recommended that e-petitions are created via the Council’s e-petition facility www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/petition. e-Petitions created or submitted through third party websites may be accepted if they comply with the provisions of this scheme.

There are no set rules as to how long you can collect signatures for a petition. It is up to you as petition organiser to determine when to close your petition and submit it to the Council. However, the Council will not normally host live petitions on its own e-Petitions site for longer than six months.

1. A clear and concise statement covering the subject of the petition. This should state what action the petitioners wish the Council to take.
2. The names and signatures of each person supporting the petition, together with the full addresses (including postcode) at which they live, work or study in Tower Hamlets.
3. For Paper Petitions (see definition above) the original signed sheets must be submitted.
4. Contact details, including an address, for the petition organiser. This is the person we will contact to explain how we will respond to the petition. The contact details of the petition organiser will not be published.
5. If the petition does not identify a petition organiser, we will contact the first listed signatory to the petition to agree who should act as the petition organiser.

Petitions submitted to the Council must include:

Scope of Petition

1. is not about a matter for which the local authority has a responsibility or which affects the borough;
2. is defamatory, frivolous; offensive; vexatious, abusive or otherwise inappropriate;
3. is substantially the same as a petition which has been put at a meeting of the Council in the past 6 months;
4. requires the disclosure of confidential or exempt information;
5. seeks to pursue or further a complaint against the Council, where other channels already exist for the determination of complaints;
6. or is otherwise unsuitable.

The Monitoring Officer will review all petitions before they are accepted / actioned. A Petition may be rejected if it:

The Monitoring Officer will also consider any request received for the petition to be dealt with in a particular way (e.g. for submission to a particular Committee or to Council). Subject to the guidance within this Petition Scheme, the Monitoring Officer has absolute discretion on how the Council will deal with any petition received and may recommend an alternative course of action to that requested.

In addition, there are some circumstances where petitions will not be dealt with under this Scheme. These include any matters relating to planning or licensing applications; where a separate consultation process is active; or any other circumstances which, in the opinion of the Monitoring Officer would mean the petitions would be better dealt with using a different Council procedure.

The Council may seek to verify the authenticity of each entry on a petition by reference to existing information such as (where appropriate) the current electoral register or other relevant records. Entries which cannot be verified may not be counted for the purposes of determining whether a petition has exceeded a threshold set out in this scheme.

In the period immediately before an election or referendum, when certain legal restrictions apply, we may need to deal with your petition differently – if this is the case we will explain the reasons and discuss the revised timescale which will apply.

If a petition does not follow the guidelines set out above, the Council may decide not to do anything further with it. In that case, we will write to you to explain the reasons.

Signing a Petition - School Children- The Council welcomes petitions created and signed by school children and university students. It may be appropriate for young people to give the name of their school or college rather than home address when signing a petition.

Signing a Petition - Council Officers- Petitioners are asked not to ask council officers to sign their petitions in relation to their service area. It is contrary to the Member / Officer Protocol for officers to lobby Councillors in respect of their specific service.

An acknowledgement will be sent to the petition organiser within 10 working days of us receiving the petition. This will let them know what we plan to do with the petition and when they can expect to receive a formal response to it. If the petition needs more investigation, we will tell the petition organiser the steps we plan to take.

If we can do what the petition asks for, the acknowledgement may confirm that we have taken the action requested and the petition will be closed.

New article...Petitions will receive a formal response from the relevant Corporate Director within 28 days of receipt. This will usually be the quickest way of addressing the issue.

If however, the petition meets the requirements to be presented/debated at a meeting of Councillors under the provisions of Section 4 of this scheme, the petition will receive a formal response within 28 days from the meeting. If you request this option, the relevant Corporate Director may still write to you. You may choose not to proceed with presentation at a meeting if you feel their response resolves the matter.

The acknowledgment will confirm when and how your response will be sent and tell you when and where the meeting will take place (if applicable and if known at that stage).

To ensure that people know what we are doing in response to the petitions we receive, the details of all petitions submitted to the Council will be published on our website, except in cases where this would be inappropriate. Whenever possible we will also publish all correspondence relating to the petition (all personal details will be removed).

Subject to your petition containing sufficient signatures as set out below, you may request to present the petition to a meeting of Councillors. There are several ways in which this can be done.

(a) Presentation to a meeting of the Council, Cabinet or relevant committee

If your petition includes the names, addresses and signatures of 30 persons who live, work or study in the borough it can be presented at an ordinary meeting of the Council or to a Council Committee.

The procedure for presenting a petition at full Council or Committee meetings is included in Appendix 1 of this scheme.

Separate to the above provision, the Mayor has agreed a scheme for public engagement at executive meetings (the Cabinet and Cabinet sub-committees), which provides a number of different ways that members of the public can make submissions relating to items on the agenda. The Cabinet public engagement scheme is set out later on in this scheme.

(b) Debate at a Council Meeting

If your petition includes the names, addresses and signatures of 2,000 persons who live, work or study in the borough, you may request that a debate be held about the petition at a full Council meeting.

The procedure for debating a petition at full Council meetings is included later in this scheme.

(c) Officer evidence to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee

If your petition includes the names, addresses and signatures of at least 1,000 persons who live, work or study in the borough, you may request that a relevant senior officer give evidence at a public meeting of the Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee. For example, you may request that a senior officer explain progress on an issue, or the advice given to councillors to enable them to make a particular decision. The senior officers who may be called to give evidence under this procedure include the Head of the Paid Service (Chief Executive) and any of the Council’s statutory or non-statutory Chief Officers (Corporate Directors).

You should be aware that the Overview and Scrutiny Committee may decide that it would be more appropriate for another officer to give evidence instead of any officer named in the petition – for instance if the named officer has changed jobs. The Committee will also call the relevant Executive Councillor(s) to attend the meeting. Committee members will ask the questions at this meeting, but you will be able to suggest questions to the Chair of the Committee by contacting the Democratic Services team [Link] up to three working days before the meeting.

General guidance on requesting your petition be presented or debated

If you would like your petition to be presented/debated at a meeting, you must submit (1) the petition; (2) a request to present or debate the petition; and (3) any request for additional assistance such as an interpreter, to the Democratic Services Team (see Section 7) by noon, 9 clear working days (not including the day notice is given or the day of the meeting) before the relevant meeting. However, please note that there is likely to be a maximum number of petitions presented at any one meeting and these slots are normally allocated in order of receipt, so early submission is advised.

When determining whether a petition has met or exceeded a threshold set out in this scheme, the Council will only count signatories for which a local connection (i.e. that the signatory either lives, works or studies in Tower Hamlets) can be evidenced from the information supplied. There is a risk that petitions created and/or submitted via third party e-petition websites may not satisfy this criterion so it is strongly recommended that e-petitions are created via the Council’s own e-petition facility www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/petition

Similar Petitions

In the event that 2 or more petitions which are substantially the same are received from different petition organisers, the Monitoring Officer may aggregate the number of valid signatures in each petition for the purpose of determining whether the threshold to trigger a Council debate of the matters raised has been reached if that is the wish of the petition organisers.

If your petition is about something over which the Council has no direct control (for example the local railway or hospital) it is unlikely you will be able to present it to a Council meeting, but we will consider making representations on behalf of the community to the relevant body. The council works with a large number of local partners and where possible may liaise with these partners to respond to your petition. If we are not able to do this for any reason (for example if what the petition calls for conflicts with Council policy), then we will set out the reasons for this to you.

If your petition is about something that a different authority is responsible for we will give consideration to what the best method is for responding to it. This might consist of simply forwarding the petition to the other authority, but could involve other steps. In any event we will notify you of the action we have taken.

You can find more information on the services for which the Council is responsible on our website. www.towerhamlets.gov.uk

In all cases we will provide the written response as set out in Section 3.

If you feel that we have not dealt with your petition properly you may make a complaint under the Council’s complaints procedure.  https://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/lgnl/council_and_democracy/complaints/complaints.aspx

Should you wish to submit a petition or require any further information, please contact:

Petitions, Democratic Services,2nd Floor, Whitechapel Town Hall, 160 Whitechapel Rd, London E1 1BJ

Email: councillor.supportteam@towerhamlets.gov.uk

Website: http://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/committee

e-petitions website: http://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/petition