What does 'reporting to a committee' actually allow that committee to change/recommend ?

Question

We have a group formed to look at Climate Change'. It's Terms of Ref include '... to report to the Environment Committee (EC)  and with recommendations being made to the Full Council...'. Recently the EC, whilst considerting a report form the group, suggested and voted to make changes to an item that the Climate Change group strongly objected to. The question is - What rights does the EC ( as opposed to the Full Council) have under a 'reporting' arrangement ?

Answer 1

I assume that the environment committee set up the group to report back to them on specific matters. "Recommendations" is the key word here and that allows the committee to accept or reject whatever recommendations made by the working group to them either in whole or part. The only comeback you have is to not take part in the group activity. Firstly you need to check if in fact the group were fully briefed by the committee and understood exactly what information the committee wanted. Very easy sometimes to mis-understand what is actually being asked for on such a wide controversial topic

Comments

The group was set up by the Full Council, hence the recommendations to the Full Council. There's no issue regarding the Full Council approving (or not) recommendations of the group. I'm trying to understand the powers of the intermediate EC with regard to the group's recommendations. Can the EC simply comment, or just take note and wait until full council before forcing a vote, or can the EC simply reject a recommendation in a meeting which always meets a week prior to the Full Council meeting. After all , the recommendations are not to the EC. The ToR are no more explicit than stated as far as what the EC expects from the group. Is that the real issue?

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The question then arises is why would the council require the group to report to the committee and the council? There needs to be defined lines of communicating information and who needs to receive such information and why. As the EC is tasked with environmental issues then it would have been logical for the council to funnel all information through the committee who would then present the " facts" for decision making to full council.

Answer 2

The question is based on an unclear premise.

As read, it seems that a Climate change group of unspecified membership  (Councillors & non Councillors?) gave a report to the EC and a set of recommendations to full council.  It seems to me that Full council  should be given both the Climate group report and EC item changes, then  must decide whether or not to endorse the EC changes.

Answer 3

The ToR is flawed.
“report to EC” + “recommendations to PC”

It’s nonsense.