[Jacqueline Gray]

Hi Adriana,

at Bedford the Council's Monitoring Officer and/or Chief Financial Officer can certify that a decision should be exempt from call-in, on the grounds that it would have a serious adverse impact - either legal or financial. There is no requirement in the Constitution to involve either the Mayor or the Chairs of the Overview and Scrutiny Committees. The number of exempt decisions has been very low - in single figures most years.

Jacqueline Gray

Bedford Borough Council

[Peter Marrington]

Hi, In Leeds our constitution states...

"The Call-In procedure set out above shall not apply:

• where the decision being taken is stated by the decision maker to be urgent"
  

( A decision may be declared urgent by the decision-maker if they consider that any delay in implementing the decision would seriously prejudice the authority's interest or the public interest.)

The reasons for a decision not being available for Call In must be made clear in any delegated decision report or Executive Board report

There is no right of appeal on this, althougth a scrutiny board may ask for the decision maker to explain in greater detail why the decision was exempt from Call In. To date this has not happened.

Hope this is helpful

[Simon Hill [2]]

At Reading the Chair (or if absent Vice-Chair) of O&S must agree to the decision being treated as a matter of urgency, although if both are absent the Mayor or Deputy Mayor's consent is required. If both of those are absent the Head of Paid Services (or nominee) can do the honours! We recently had an urgent item on solar panels procurement.

[Adriana Stapleton]

Many thanks to you all. I was actually wondering whether anyone recalled whether there was anything in the legislation or guidance saying who the person should be, but given that there are so many variations in all of our councils, I'm guessing not.

PS this is the slowest website I have ever known, it has taken me 17 minutes to make this reply, no wonder we get thousands of views but so few responses!

Rant over!

Adriana