Full meeting to decide on proposals for changing how residents petition the council

Hertfordshire residents who want to petition the county council will have to collect signatures through the council’s own website or by hand, according to planned changes.

Although the council’s e-petition scheme already ‘implies’ e-petitions should be set up on the council’s website, officers say it is not ‘explicit’.

And that means that, in practice, council officers have been accepting e-petitions created elsewhere, such as on the website change.org.

But now changes to the council constitution have been drafted that would enable officers to reject petitions created elsewhere.

The proposed changes were backed by a meeting of the council’s standards committee on Tuesday (May 9).

And now it will be up to a meeting of the full council to decide whether – or not – to adopt the change to the constitution.

At the meeting the council’s director of law and governance Quentin Baker said that where a petition was created on another website council officers had to spend additional time validating them.

And – highlighting change.org – he said that there could be ‘technical problems’ where a petition organiser could change the petition statement part-way through.

Pointing to the experience of another authority, he said this could result in people having signed a petition, but then finding the wording had changed.

Nevertheless Liberal Democrat Cllr Steve Jarvis spoke against the proposed change ro the constitution.

He said he was unhappy that the council would restrict the way in which the public petition the council.

And he suggested the council would be going against the trend of providing more means for people to raise issues.

He agreed that it was “highly undesirable” that the nature of a petition could be changed part-way through.

And he said where there was evidence of this – other than to correct a typo or something similar – it would be ‘entirely reasonable grounds to reject the petition’.

“I do think we need to try and allow people to interact with us in a way that suits the public of Hertfordshire, rather than try and make them do it the way that suits us best,” he said.

“And I think that we could probably come up with a way of doing that that would allow petitions to be submitted the way in which the public finds easiest.”

Labour Cllr Nigel Bell said that it shouldn’t be necessary for e-petitions only to come through the county council portal.

And he suggested that he wouldn’t to see anything that seems to be more restrictive than now.

Backing the proposed change, Conservative Cllr Sunny Thusu pointed to the changing nature of collecting signatures for a petition.

Not too long ago, he reminded councillors, petitioners would have to write down their petition and then go door-to-door for signatures.

And now, he acknowledged it could be done online – suggesting he could now set up an online petition and get 2,000 signatures by the end of the day.

The proposal is part of a package of proposed changes to the council’s constitution, with others relating to motions and questions.

In order to be implemented the changes would need to be approved by a meeting of the full county council.