Three motions and you’re out
Medway Council proposes sweeping changes to meetings, plus Budgens faces Chatham challenge, a mysterious new restaurant, news in brief, and more
Medway Council meetings have long been ridiculed for their excessive length, but new changes to try and fix the issue could see entire political groups excluded from the democratic process. We look at what’s going on below. Further down, we have news that a new Budgens in Chatham is facing a big challenge, a mysterious new restaurant in Strood exposes how inaccessible important information is, news in brief, and more.
Three motions and you’re out
A major overhaul of how Medway Council conducts its business is on the cards, which, if approved by councillors, could spell the end of meetings regularly running past midnight.
Councillors will quietly wave through (in procedural terms, at least) a series of sweeping changes to the council’s constitution during this week’s full council meeting, designed to slash the length of meetings. Under the new rules, full council meetings will be limited to a maximum of three motions per session, the number of speeches will be capped, and public and councillor questions will be redirected to the Cabinet, something that has been trialled for all of two meetings.
It's a move designed to modernise a system that has, frankly, been creaking for some time.
Anyone who's ever sat through a Medway Council meeting knows the drill: Start at 7pm, finish when the calendar has ticked over to a new day. It's a schedule that’s increasingly out of step with the lives of councillors and the public, many of whom have jobs, families, and other commitments.
Part of the changes will see just three motions allowed per full council meeting, with a tightly managed rota deciding who gets to bring what. Motions will now have to stick to local authority business, so no more symbolic stances on foreign policy or climate treaties, and the Monitoring Officer will vet them before they even reach the agenda.
If you want to bring a motion about bin collections? Fine. Something about Gaza? Not anymore. Ironically, Medway’s Labour administration is behind these new proposals, who were very fond they were of grandstanding on national issues while in opposition. That tends to happen when one gains power.
The new system marks a shift from the current setup, where every group, no matter its size, gets to bring one motion per meeting. In theory, this sounds fair, but in practice, it means a party with 31 councillors has the same agenda access as a lone independent.
The revised model revolves around ‘equity’ rather than ‘equality.’ That means the number of motions allocated across the year will now reflect group size. Labour, with just over half the council seats, can expect the largest number of motions. The Conservatives will get a regular slot. The Independent Group, Reform, and independent councillor Chris Spalding will face a ballot to get the final slot on the agenda for the meetings, where the two main parties generously allow them a space. Under the plans put forward by Medway Council, at least one of them would likely not get a motion throughout the entire year.
It's a shift some smaller groups see as a stitch-up, but the council argues it’s just practical: “a system that delivers equality but not equity,” says the report, “significantly increases the voice of a small constituency and dampens the voice of a significantly larger constituency.” In other words, if you’ve got two councillors, you shouldn’t take up half the meeting.
Other proposed changes include limiting the number of councillors that can speak on each motion to avoid repetition, more questions going straight to cabinet, less reporting from overview and scrutiny committees, and information reports nodded through without debate.
For the council leadership, all of this is a case of streamlining, with fewer speeches, tighter agendas, and a focus on issues the council can actually influence. For the smaller parties, it’s a narrowing of democratic space, and it’s hard to disagree when entire political parties could be barred from submitting a motion through the entire council year.
There’s no getting away from the fact that the Independent Group, Reform, and Cllr Spalding would have a much slimmer shot at seeing their motion debated, especially at meetings when Labour and the Conservatives use up all three slots between them. The report doesn’t shy away from this point, but says the trade-off is worth it: Shorter meetings, better focus, and less political grandstanding.
This is ironic given how the Labour administration is using an entire section of this week’s full Medway Council meeting for just that. In the councillor questions section of the meeting, rather than councillors holding the administration to account, the lineup is full of questions from Labour to Labour about what Reform are doing over the border at Kent County Council. Indeed, 11 of the 13 questions are about Reform at KCC, with the only two genuine questions submitted by Reform being relegated to the end of the agenda, with time likely to expire before they can be asked.
So what happens next? Nothing immediately. Under council rules, any changes to the procedure rules have to lie on the table until the next meeting. So expect a proper debate, and likely some political posturing, at the October full council, where the changes will be formally approved.
There is a clear need to get Medway Council meetings under control, as no organisation should need to meet for six hours until the early hours on a weeknight to get things done. Moving some questions to the cabinet makes sense, even if the implementation thus far has been underwhelming. Finding ways to reduce time on motions is also needed, but shouldn’t be at the expense of excluding entire political groups from the process, which this seems to be proposing.
Perhaps it’s time that Medway Council finally accepted that running a council of this size might require more than one meeting every three months…
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Budgens faces Chatham challenge
The opening of a new Budgens supermarket in a flagship Medway Council development could be at risk after parts of Medway Council have filed objections to Medway Council against the plans. Medway Council will now have to decide whether it wants to listen to Medway Council and reject the application.
The proposed Budgens is for the Pioneer Wharf development on Chatham waterfront, one of a number of new mixed-use residential blocks in the area. While residential is clearly welcomed, the response is more negative toward a new grocery store.
Like a recent case in Rochester, where Medway Council rejected a new Tesco Express store because it sat within a Cumulative Impact Area (CIA) designed to limit the number of outlets selling alcohol in a problematic area, Budgens sits within the Chatham CIA area.
In this case, Medway Council’s own Public Health and Trading Standards sections have objected to the plans, alongside Kent Police and Steven Hutchins, a member of the public who was part of the charge against the aforementioned Tesco Express.
It was clear from the start that Budgens’ application was wildly optimistic, asking for a licence to sell alcohol from 6am to 1am. Still, like Tesco, it is unlikely that even a significant reduction in opening hours would satisfy those objecting, given the location of the application.
The debate does present an interesting quandary for Medway Council, though. The waterfront development is a flagship project for the council as part of plans to regenerate Chatham town centre. It can also be argued that grocery provision in the centre is severely lacking for a town of its size, with Sainsbury’s the only retailer with a presence nearby. But if anywhere new selling alcohol within the area is unacceptable under the council’s policies, it is hard to imagine what the commercial units dotted through the mixed-use development will ever be filled with.
Mysterious new restaurant coming to Medway Valley Park
Compared to some councils, there are some things Medway Council are actually quite good at, particularly around making public documents available in a timely and accessible manner. Planning applications, council meeting documents, and plenty of other documents are routinely made available via the council’s website in good time.
The same seemingly cannot be said for Gravesham Borough Council. Which wouldn’t matter too much to those of us in Medway if Medway Council hadn’t merged their licensing department with Gravesham’s, meaning we are now at the mercy of the neighbouring council to get what should be publicly accessible information.
This is a lengthy preamble to a story about a new restaurant opening at Medway Valley Park in Strood, but thanks to the way Gravesham operates, we have no meaningful information to give you, so we’re talking about this instead.
About a week and a half ago, we spotted a new licence application on Gravesham Borough Council’s Medway Council licensing page (we know) from ‘Medway Valley Dining’ to sell alcohol and play live and recorded music. It helpfully gave the address as ‘Restaurant, Medway Valley Leisure Park, Chariot Way, Rochester, ME2 2SS,’ which would perhaps be more helpful if there weren’t four restaurant units within Medway Valley Leisure Park.
So the odyssey to get information out of Gravesham Borough Council began. We contacted their licensing department to request a copy of the application and to clarify which unit it pertains to.
After three days, they told us that it refers to the currently empty Coast to Coast restaurant unit, which has sat empty for many years, but didn’t provide a full copy of the application. We still haven’t seen it nearly a week later, so we can’t tell you trivial information like who is behind the application or what they intend to do. Meanwhile, residents are supposed to respond to the application with representations despite not knowing anything about it.
Gravesham Borough Council helpfully points out that the plans can be viewed ‘during usual business hours’ at their Gravesend headquarters. But the idea that the only way Medway residents can see a licence application for their area is to traipse to an entirely separate borough between 9am and 5pm on a weekday is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
Medway and Gravesham combined their licensing department as part of a cost-cutting exercise. There is a logic in doing this, but if that combined department can’t even get quite basic documents online and accessible, it does raise some alarm bells about how things might work under in our local government reorganisation future, where one council could be responsible for everything from Dartford to Faversham.
In brief
🏗️ A planning application has been submitted for 18 new homes in Rainham. The site on Denbeigh Avenue currently has two homes, which would be demolished under the proposals.
🔥 If you looked outside on Friday, you probably saw smoke from a significant fire at a recycling facility on Medway City Estate. The cause is believed to be a discarded battery.
🏥 Medway Hospital’s £37.4m decarbonisation programme enters a new phase this week, with work to replace hundreds of ageing windows getting underway. The hospital is also replacing gas boilers with heat pumps, adding solar panels, and introducing energy efficient lighting.
🗣️ As mentioned above, Medway Council meets for its July meeting on Thursday (17 Jul). Items on the agenda beyond constitutional changes are reviewing senior officer pay, amendments to the capital programme, and the £1.8m sale of property that the council owned in Hemel Hempstead.
➡️ Not strictly Medway related, but Kent County Council held their own full council meeting last week. We were there under our sister Kent Current title and have a full write-up on just how things are going over the border.
More Authority
For our weekend interview, Steven sat down with Ajaib Hussain, Chair of Medway Inter Faith Action, an organisation that brings members of Medway’s faith communities together. He talks about what brought his family to the Medway Towns, how he came to be chair of the organisation, Ramadan, and lots more.
“Let's look for a brighter future”
This weekend, Medway Inter Faith Action had its annual Walk for Peace, which we discussed with chair of the organisation Ajaib Hussain here. We carried on after that conversation to discuss how Ajaib came to be the chair of MIFA, Ramadan, and what brought his family to the Medway Towns.
Footnotes
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Music that soundtracked the creation of this edition: Tourist in this Town by Allison Crutchfield, No One’s Coming For Us by Trust Fund, and High Society by Enon.
Thank you for highlighting the constitutional changes proposed. You are right that nothing will change this Thursday but who will dare propose and second the Legal Officer's proposal? As you rightly point out: only 2 Full Council meetings and 2 Cabinet metings have taken place as a "trial". It's been far from successful and questioning Councillors clearly didn't sound confident at the last Cabinet meeting. In future, no longer will each Full Council hear reports of Overview and Scruting committees. Since its formation, Medway Council has reduced the number of Full Council meetings and seems hell bent on reducing public access to Full Council and not only because you have to park further away or get your question in one day sooner. Surely, as you suggest, we need more Council meetings not the reductionist approach proposed. Contemporary UK history has shown the dangers of reducing democratic particpation.
To be fair to Medway Borough Council and/or Gravesham Borough Council, a search for "Medway Valley Dining ME2 2SS" at https://www.findmyaddress.co.uk/search would have shown that UPRN 200000895762 is meant. There might be a case for licence applications to include the UPRN as a matter of course.