Should a committee approve all of its preceding draft minutes?

Question

Our latest agenda only includes approval of the minutes of the last two meetings.  However the minutes of an earlier meeting from over two months ago, that are published in draft on our website, have not been approved.  Should I raise this as a point of order at the start of the meeting?  Our Standing Orders don't make it clear whether minutes should be approved at the next meeting after they are published.

What controls should Councils have to make sure that all minutes are approved?

Our Standing Orders state that minutes should be published five working days after each meeting, however, due to workload, our Clerk is failing to meet this timescale.  Can Committees ask the Clerk to prioritise the production of minutes over other work in order to get minutes produced in a timely way?

Answer 1

Local Government Act 1972, Schedule 12, para 41 (4) states that the minutes of a meeting should be signed at the next suitable meeting.  So if it is a full council meeting, the minutes should be signed at the next full council meeting. For a specific committee, they should be signed at the next specific committee meeting and so on.  So you should raise this as a point of order - it looks like it slipped through the net.

With regards to the publishing of draft minutes, there is no legislation detailing the speed in which draft minutes should be published except the Transparency Code 2015 that requires draft minutes to be published within a month of the meeting.  It may well be that you need to amend your standing orders or ask your Clerk for a suitable deadline.