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The Full Council

The role of the Full Council is set out in Article 7 of the Constitution. This article also sets out decisions that only full Council can take.

What do Council meetings do?

The Full Council is the highest decision making body of the Council. All 57 Councillors, together with the elected Mayor, can attend the meetings. Full Council is responsible for setting policies that other Committees need to work to when making decisions - The Policy Framework. It is also responsible for agreeing the Council’s budget.

There are four types of Full Council meeting:

Annual Council

This takes place in May every year. The Annual Council meeting elects the Speaker and Deputy speaker for the municipal year and appoints Councillors to the various Council Committees. It also appoints Councillors to other bodies to which the Council can make nominations such as the Association of London Government and local Housing Associations. The Mayor also announces at this meeting who is to be in the Cabinet for the coming year.

Normal Council meetings.

These take place monthly, and generally consider a combination of items, some of which are prompted by the public as well as Council business. The standing items which normal Council meetings will normally consider are listed in the Rules of Procedure.

Extraordinary Council meetings

The Monitoring Officer can be requested to call Extraordinary Council meetings by:

(i) the Council by resolution;
(ii) the Speaker of the Council;
(iii) any five members of the Council if they have signed a requisition presented to the Speaker and he/she has refused to call a meeting or has failed to call a meeting within seven days of the presentation of the requisition.

The business of the extraordinary meeting shall be only that specified by the Speaker, Monitoring Officer or in the requisition.

Innovative debates.

Normal Full Council meetings are conducted in line with the Constitution, which has specific rules on things such as who can speak, for how long and about what.

The Constitution also makes provision for Council meetings to take different formats, possibly involving the public or external speakers in the meeting, which means a suspension of the Council’s Standing Orders is necessary.

Examples of experimental debates include having a different chair, inviting community groups to discuss key strategies and inviting partner organisations to join debates on joint strategies.