Changes to council meetings proposed over backlog

Since 2021, full council meetings in Sunderland have been limited to up to three hours

Rules to Sunderland City Council meetings could change to deal with an agenda backlog.

Currently, any motions not dealt with during the local authority's full council meetings are deferred to the next one.

But under the proposals, motions would no longer be carried forward automatically and councillors will instead have to resubmit them to a future meeting.

If approved by the Labour-led local authority on Wednesday, the changes will come into effect immediately.

Full council meetings involve all 75 elected councillors on Wearside and have been limited to three hours since 2021.

However, recent months have seen a backlog, with agenda items not being dealt with and more motions being deferred to future meetings, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

This, in combination with the time limit, has led to questions from councillors and the public not being dealt with in public at the last two full meetings in June and September

Although "written responses" from both meetings have since been uploaded to the council's website, councillors would normally have had the chance to ask additional questions to leaders.

A situation has also been created where motions are discussed around six months after they were originally submitted for debate.

The new procedure rules have been put forward by the council's ruling Labour cabinet.

A report discussed by cabinet in October said the changes aimed to "enable business at council meetings to be considered expeditiously".

It was noted that unless changes were made, it was "likely that council will continue to be unable to conclude all business on the agenda at ordinary meetings in one sitting".