(Monitoring Officer) To receive a verbal report on progress to date with the Constitution Review project. The Corporate Communications Team Manager will be in attendance to discuss the options for improving the accessibility of the Constitution.
Minutes:
Scheme of Delegation:
N Boateng informed the group that the Constitution Workstream Group have reduced the Scheme of Delegation from 140 pages to 40-50 pages by removing duplications and streamlining it while ensuring that no crucial information had been lost.
N Boateng planned to take the revised article to SLT and the wider leadership team, then back to the Constitution Working Group for approval before going to Council to be agreed.
The Chairman, Cllr Lion suggested breaking down the re-writing of the constitution into 3 phases to ensure the seamless handover to the new members of the Constitution Working Group next year. All members concurred.
Resolved: That the progress of the revision of the Scheme of Delegations section within the Constitution be noted.
Improving accessibility of the constitution:
T Carne and S Mitchell discussed how EFDC is currently using the committee management system (mod.gov) to view, store and edit the Constitution. The group discussed how the Constitution in its current form (PDF format) is no longer fit for purpose because it was not accessible for people to search the Constitution for the article or part they were looking for. is The Council was currently moving away from PDF format in favour of HTML for the website due to its better rendering on different-sized devices, ease of searching with multiple search engines and being better suited for users with disabilities such as blindness as it could support accessibility software.
The Chairman, Cllr Lion noted that the constitution in its current form was suitable for Officers and Members of the Council using the tools that we had available such as the mod.gov app. However, other stakeholders such as members of the public, contractors and consultants who wished to read a part of the Constitution might struggle to find what they were looking for using the online PDF version.
The Group noted that while Mod.Gov had its advantages in terms of automatic page numbering and the ability to look at old versions of the Constitution, the benefits of transferring the Constitution to HTML format outweighed these. In HTML format the Constitution would no longer be broken down into multiple small documents which made it difficult to search. This coupled with the amendments that were being made by N Boateng would make the constitution much more readable and accessible. T Carne noted that if HTML was not widely adopted, there was always the option to revert to PDF format.
In response to a question from the Chairman, A Lion. N Boateng confirmed that the decision to change the constitution into HTML format would have to go to Council to ratify the decision, but suggested officers should create a draft of at least part of the constitution to have something to present to all the Council members.
ACTION 1: N Boateng to contact the said Councils should members decide to transfer to the HTML version of the constitution to discuss how the changes affected them.
ACTION 2: Testing to commence on putting the Constitution in HTML format by T Carne and S Mitchell.