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).