The Council is made up of the elected Mayor and the 45
Councillors of Tower Hamlets. The
Council is responsible for a range of functions that it only alone
may carry out. Such functions include: setting the Council’s
main policies and its overall budget, the Council tax rate for the
year; adopting and making material changes to the Council’s
Constitution and approving the Members allowance scheme.
The Council cannot take every decision itself. Therefore, it
appoints a number of committees to carry out specific functions on
its behalf. These include: the regulatory committees (Planning and
Licensing to determine applications) and a Standards (Advisory)
Committee amongst others.
Council functions are also known as ‘non Executive
functions’.
The Council also provides a forum for questioning and debate
with the Executive including the consideration of petitions. See
our ways of
participation page for more information about
this.
Meetings of the Council are usually held on a Wednesday
evening at the Town Hall, Mulberry Place and is open to the public
to attend. A timetable for its meeting
dates and deadlines can be found here.
Types of
meetings.
There are four types of Council meetings:
•
Annual Council that is usually held in May. The purpose of
which is to carry out such tasks as appointing the Council’s
speaker and deputy speaker, the Council’s
Committees, their membership and
terms of reference for that year.
•
The budget meeting in February specifically for setting the
Council’s budget and Council tax.
•
Ordinary scheduled meetings.
•
Extra-ordinary meetings, in addition to those scheduled, to
consider a particular matter that cannot wait until the next
ordinary meeting.
Useful links
– Council
Constitution
•
Role of the Council (Part 2, Article 4,The Full Council) pgs
15-17.
•
List of Council Functions and delegations (Part 3. 1,
Responsibility for Functions) pgs 55-89.
•
Terms of Reference for the Council (Part 3.3.1,
Responsibility for Functions) pgs 93-94.
•
Council’s Procedural Rules (Part 4.1) pgs
137-159.
•
Guidance
for asking questions and submitting petitions to
Council
Webcasts
Films of
recent meetings are available to view (external
site).