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4. What if I'm unhappy with the council's response?

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What if I am unhappy with the council’s response?

If you are unhappy with the formal response from the council about your petition, you may ask that the steps that were taken by the council be looked at by the relevant Scrutiny Committee.

For this to happen, you must make a request within 20 working days of receiving either:

(i) the formal response from the Petitions Officer, which is sent once all the steps in the initial acknowledgement letter have been carried out; or

(ii) the acknowledgement letter that said no further action would be taken.

Your request should say why you feel that the response is inadequate.

How will your request be dealt with?

Within 10 working days of receiving the review request, we will tell the petition organiser of the time, date and venue of the meeting of the Scrutiny Committee that will consider the response to the petition.

Where possible, this will be the next scheduled meeting of the relevant Scrutiny Committee. If the relevant Committee has already been involved in responding to the petition, the Petitions Officer will arrange for another Scrutiny Committee to review the response.

What will happen at the meeting?

The Committee may require officers to attend the meeting and give evidence. It may also decide to invite the petition organiser to attend and tell the Committee the reasons for the review request and to answer Members’ questions.

Even if the Committee does not decide to do this, the petition organiser, and other people who have signed the petition, may attend the meeting and listen to the Committee’s debate.

What can the Committee decide?

The Committee may:

• recommend an investigation into the matter;
• make recommendations to the Council’s Cabinet; or
• arrange for the matter to be considered at a full meeting of the Council.

What will happen after the meeting?

The Petitions Officer will write to the petition organiser within five working days after the meeting setting out the decision of the Committee.

If the decision means that further action will be taken, the Petitions Officer will tell the petition organiser of the action within a reasonable time after the action has been carried out.