Jump to: How To Send | Guidelines | What Will The Council Do? | How Will The Council Respond? | Full Council Debates | Officer Evidence | E-petitions | How Your Petition Is Dealt With

The Council welcomes petitions and recognises that petitions are one way in which people can let it know their concerns. All petitions sent or presented to the Council will receive an acknowledgement from the Council within 5 working days of receipt. This acknowledgement will set out what the Council plans to do with the petition. The Council will treat something as a petition if it is identified as being a petition, or if it seems that it is intended to be a petition.

Any person, regardless of age, who lives, studies or works in the District is able to submit a petition.

How to send a Petition to the Council

Paper petitions can be sent to:

Democratic Services Manager
Ashfield District Council
Council Offices
Urban Road
Kirkby-in-Ashfield
Nottingham
NG17 8DA

Or by email to: democratic.services@ashfield-dc.gov.uk

Petitions can also be presented to a meeting of the Council. These meetings take place regularly, dates and times can be found on the Council's website (www.ashfield-dc.gov.uk). If you would like to present your petition to the Council, or would like your Councillor or someone else to present it on your behalf, please contact Democratic Services Section on 01623 457317 at least 10 working days before the meeting and they will talk you through the process. If your petition has received 1,000 signatures or more it will also be scheduled for a Council debate and if this is the case the Council will let you know whether this will happen at the same meeting or a later meeting of the Council.

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What are the Guidelines for Submitting a Petition?

Petitions submitted to the Council must include:

• a clear and concise statement covering the subject of the petition. It should state what action the petitioners wish the Council to take;

• the name and address and signature of any person supporting the petition.

Petitions should be accompanied by contact details, including an address, for the petition organiser. This is the person the Council will contact to explain how it will respond to the petition. The contact details of the petition organiser will not be placed on the website. If the petition does not identify a petition organiser, the Council will contact signatories to the petition to agree who should act as the petition organiser.

Petitions which are considered by the Chief Executive to be vexatious, abusive or otherwise inappropriate will not be accepted.

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

Repeat petitions – petitions will not normally be considered if they are received within 6 months of another petition having already been considered by the Council on the same matter.

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.

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What will the Council do when it receives my Petition?

An acknowledgement will be sent to the petition organiser within 5 working days of receiving the petition. It will let them know what the Council plans to do with the petition and when they can expect to hear from the Council again. It will also be published on the Council's website (www.ashfield-dc.gov.uk).

If the Council can do what your petition asks for, the acknowledgement may confirm that the Council has taken the action requested and the petition will be closed. If the petition has enough signatures to trigger a Council debate, or a Senior Officer giving evidence, then the acknowledgment will confirm this and tell you when and where the meeting will take place. If the petition needs more investigation, the Council will tell you the steps it plans to take.

If the petition applies to a planning or licensing application, is a statutory petition (for example, requesting a referendum on having an elected mayor), or on a matter where there is already an existing right of appeal, such as Council Tax banding and non-domestic rates, other procedures apply.

If the Council receives two or more petitions relating to the same issue(s) it will consider amalgamating the signatories but only with the approval of the petition organisers.

The Council will not take action on any petition which it considers to be vexatious, abusive or otherwise inappropriate and will explain the reasons for this in its acknowledgement of the petition.

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

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How will the Council Respond to Petitions?

The Council's response to a petition will depend on what a petition asks for and how many people have signed it, but may include one or more of the following:

• taking the action requested in the petition;
• considering the petition at a Council meeting;
• holding an inquiry into the matter;
• undertaking research into the matter;
• holding a public meeting;
• holding a consultation;
• holding a meeting with petitioners;
• referring the petition for consideration by the Council's Overview and Scrutiny Committee*;
• calling a referendum;
• writing to the petition organiser setting out the Council's views about the request in the petition.

*Overview and Scrutiny Committees are Committees of Councillors who are responsible for scrutinising the work of the Council – in other words, the Overview and Scrutiny Committee has the power to hold the Council's decision makers to account.

In addition to these steps, the Council will consider all the specific actions it can potentially take on the issues highlighted in a petition. The table below gives some examples:

If your petition is about something over which the Council has no direct control (for example the local railway or hospital) it 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 will work with these partners to respond to your petition. If it is not able to do this for any reason, or example, if what the petition calls for conflicts with Council policy, then the Council will set out the reasons for this to you. You can find more information on the services for which the Council is responsible on the Council's website.

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

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Full Council Debates

If a petition contains more than 1,000 signatures it will be debated by the Full Council unless it is a petition asking for a Senior Council Officer to give evidence at a public meeting.

This means that the issue raised in the petition will be discussed at a meeting which all Councillors can attend. The Council will endeavour to consider the petition at its next meeting, although on some occasions this may not be possible and consideration will then take place at the following meeting. The petition organiser will be given 5 minutes to present the petition at the meeting and the petition will then be discussed by Councillors for a maximum of 15 minutes. The Council will decide how to respond to the petition at this meeting. It may decide to take the action the petition requests, not to take the action requested for reasons put forward in the debate, or to commission further investigation into the matter, for example by a relevant Committee.

Where the issue is one on which the Council's Cabinet is required to make the final decision, the Council will decide whether to make recommendations to inform that decision. The petition organiser will receive written confirmation of this decision. This confirmation will also be published on the Council's website.

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Officer evidence

Your petition may ask for a Senior Council Officer to give evidence at a public meeting about something for which the Officer is responsible as part of their job. For example, your petition may ask a Senior Council Officer to explain progress on an issue, or to explain the advice given to Elected Members to enable them to make a particular decision.

If your petition contains at least 500 signatures, the relevant Senior Council Officer will give evidence at a public meeting of the Council's Overview and Scrutiny Committee. A list of the Senior Council Officers that can be called to give evidence is set out below:

• Chief Executive
• Deputy Chief Executive (Resources)
• Chief Finance Officer (S151 Officer)
• Monitoring Officer
• Service Director - Economy
• Service Director - Environment
• Service Director - Corporate Services
• Assistant Chief Executive (Governance)

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 may also decide to call the relevant Councillor to attend the meeting. Committee Members will ask the questions at this meeting, however, the petition organiser or nominated person will be able to ask up to 3 questions within an allocated 15 minutes. The petition organiser must give the Overview and Scrutiny Manager written notice of the questions at least 10 working days before the meeting. Questions considered by the Chief Executive to be vexatious, abusive, inappropriate or that require the disclosure of exempt or confidential information will not be considered.

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E-petitions

The Council welcomes e-petitions which are created and submitted through its website. E-petitions must follow the same guidelines as paper petitions. The petition organiser will need to provide the Council with his/her name, postal address and email address. There is also a need to decide how long the petition is to be open for signatures. This would usually be for a period of at least a month but can vary, up to a maximum of 12 months.

When you create an e-petition, it may take up to 5 working days before it is published online. This is because the Council has to check that the content of the petition is suitable before it is made available for signature although the Council will strive to do this within 2 days.

If the Council feels it cannot publish the petition for some reason, it will contact you within this time to explain. You will be able to change and resubmit your petition if you wish. If you do not do this within 10 working days, a summary of the petition and the reason why it has not been accepted will be published under the “rejected petitions” section of the website.

When an e-petition has closed for signature, it will automatically be submitted to the Democratic Services Team. In the same way as a paper petition, you will receive an acknowledgement within 5 working days. If you would like to present your e-petition to a meeting of the Council, please contact Simon Oldham Democratic Services Manager, Tel: 01623 457314 or S.Oldham@ashfield-dc.gov.uk within 5 working days of receipt of the acknowledgement.

A petition acknowledgement and response will be emailed to everyone who has signed the e-petition and elected to receive this information. The acknowledgement and response will be published on this website.

You can see all the e-petitions currently available for signature here: www.ashfield-dc.gov.uk/petitionscheme.

When you sign an e-petition you will be asked to provide your name, your postcode and a valid email address. When you have submitted this information you will be sent an email to the email address you have provided. This email will include a link which you must click on in order to confirm the email address is valid. Once this step is complete your “signature” will be added to the petition. People visiting the e-petition will be able to see your name in the list of those who have signed it but your contact details will not be visible.

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What can I do if I feel my petition has not been dealt with properly?

If you feel that the Council has not dealt with your petition properly, the petition organiser has the right to request that the Council's Overview and Scrutiny Committee review the steps that the Council has taken in response to your petition. A request for a review must be made within 20 working days of notification of the Council's decision on the petition. The request for a review must be sent to the Democratic Services Manager. It is helpful to everyone, and can improve the prospects for a review if the petition organiser gives a short explanation of the reasons why the Council's response is not considered to be adequate.

The Committee will endeavour to consider your request at its next meeting, although on some occasions this may not be possible and consideration will take place at the following meeting. Should the Committee determine the Council has not dealt with your petition adequately, it may use any of its powers to deal with the matter. These powers include instigating an investigation, making recommendations to the Council's Cabinet and arranging for the matter to be considered at a meeting of the Full Council.

Once the appeal has been considered the petition organiser will be informed of the results within 5 working days. The results of the review will also be published on the Council's website.

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