Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960 Section 1 (2)

Question

I recently attended a Parish Council meeting where 2 items on the agenda were discussed in private and the public were asked to leave the meeting.   No resolution was passed (or discussed) to make the items private - the members of the public were just told to leave with no explanation given.
My questions are as follows:

1)Should a resolution have been discussed and passed prior to the agenda items?

2)Where the items were subsequently discussed and voted on in private, should the items remain private?

Answer 1

A resolution is required to exclude the public and press from an agenda item, even if no public or press are present. The resolution should outline the nature of the matter to be discussed, without divulging any confidential information.

The minutes of the meeting must record the decision made, but without divulging any confidential information. In other words, if a contractor is being appointed, the name of the chosen contractor and outline of the contract should be made public, but the details of the unsuccessful bidders need not be. For legal and staffing matters, there may be a fine line between recording the decision of the council and not sharing too much information.

Answer 2

It’s difficult to answer as you have no idea what was being discussed so for example it might have been a contract or as in my Parish Councils case it was once because the item was embarrassing !
So write in and ask why no vote was taken and briefly what was discussed and take it from there, in theory unless confidentiality is involved the next minutes should show what was discussed