Requirements for committees and sub-committees
9.—(1) Every committee of a local authority established under these Regulations and every sub-committee of such a committee is to be treated as a committee or sub-committee of a principal council for the purposes of Part VA of the Local Government Act 1972 (access to meetings and documents of certain authorities, committees and sub-committees).
(2) Every committee of a local authority established under these Regulations (except an area committee) and every sub-committee of such a committee is to be treated as a body to which section 15 of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989(1) (duty to allocate seats to political groups) applies.
(3) Subject to any enactment, every committee of a local authority (other than the Board) and every sub-committee of such a committee (other than a sub-committee of the Board) —
(a)must include among its membership a majority of members of the authority who are not Board members; and
(b)must have a chairperson who is a member of the authority but who is not a Board member.
(4) A committee or sub-committee of a local authority established under these Regulations, except an area committee, or a sub-committee of such a committee, must comprise a maximum of ten members or twenty per cent of the authority’s members (calculated by rounding up the number of members to the nearest whole number when in calculating the percentage the number of members is not a whole number) whichever is the greater number.
(5) A local authority operating alternative arrangements must allocate the chairpersonships of committees established under these Regulations so as to secure, as far as practicable, that the balance of the political groups in the local authority is reflected by those chairpersonships.
(6) A planning committee, licensing committee or area committee or a sub-committee of such a committee with responsibility for any of the functions listed in Part A of Schedule 1 (functions relating to town and country planning and development control) must have a minimum of eight members.
(7) Subsections (2) and (5) of section 102 of the 1972 Act are to apply to a committee established under these Regulations or a sub-committee of such a committee, as they apply to a committee appointed under that section.
1989 c. 42. Section 18 is amended by section 99(3) to (9) of the Local Government Act 2000.