What is this Working Party Doing?

Last year the Executive Committee took on the major task of re-writing the constitution to make it shorter and easier to read. A lot of detail was taken out so that the Union was able to respond to the needs and desires of students without the students having to learn a lot of procedural details in order to be heard.

That constitution was agreed by the last Annual General Meeting.

A lot of the things which were taken out of the Constitution are still important, just not neccessarily as part of that document, which is the governing document of the Union. The Union is now going through a process of reviewing all of those elements which were not included in the revised constitution.

In order to do this the Union has set up a working party consisting of sabbatical officers and some staff. The group will come up with a range of operational recommendations and operational policies, which will go to the Executive Committee for their consideration.

Tuesday 22 April 2008

Policy

We recognised that there are two types of policy, which we will call Union Policy and Operational Policy.

Operational Policy will be the responsibility of the Executive Committee and the Management of the Union. These represent the workaday policies which determine how we manage the Union, rather than decisions about issues of principle.

In all matters Union Policy will take precedence over Operational Policy.

Policy proposals for Union Policy should be presented on a template, which will be provided by the Union.

The template will include the following sections:

Background to the proposals

Recommendations for action.

Impact on the Union:
Cost
Reputation
Diversity/Inclusion.

The template will include and a statement that the Union Council will allocate implementation to an executive committee member, in line with a previously agreed decision of the Council.

We will find an alternative word to use instead of “motion” and include an explanation of the meaning of that word on the template.

Decisions will be made in Union Council by simple majority of those present (subject to section 2.13 of the constitution, which says that decisions of Union Council will only be binding if 2/3 of elected members are present).

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