Our new Constitution

We are pleased to share that we have officially approved and fully adopted our new Constitution. It outlines the roles, responsibilities and functions of the Council.

The changes include recommendations from an independent governance review by the Local Government Association.

Key changes include:

• An increase to the time allowed for members of the public to speak at planning committee meetings.
• Creation of an additional scrutiny committee focused on communities, planning and the local economy to enhance the scrutiny function and enable more meaningful engagement in policy development.
• An enhanced schedule of regular all-member briefings, replacing the much smaller Policy Development Advisory Groups
• A single planning committee for the whole District, where members will be required to attend extensive training to make sound decisions that will be rooted in planning policy, while allowing other local members to speak more freely on behalf of residents.
• An increased requirement for members on specialist committees such as planning to undergo relevant training.
• Splitting the licensing function into two committees: one to deal with matters such as the determination of premises licences and the other to deal with a variety of other matters including taxi licensing.

Read more

A print copy is available at our offices, or you can find the link
on our website at: www.horsham. gov.uk/council-democracy-and- elections.