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.

Wednesday 30 April 2008

Rules Governing Meetings

The following was agreed for all meetings:

All meetings will be open to all members, unless the meeting is dealing with issues which the chair has determined to be confidential (in line with the confidentiality policy).

Meetings will start on time.

A time will be set by which the meeting will finish.

The members present will have the authority to extend the meeting past the scheduled end time.

The chair is responsible for managing the meeting, balancing each person’s right to speak and the need to deal with the business of the meeting.

A record of all meetings will be kept, including details of any decisions and actions which should result from the decisions.

The chair of the meeting will be responsible for providing a report to the members as soon as possible (this would exclude any issues which are personally or commercially confidential). This report should be given in the most appropriate format, e.g. formal written report, email, video etc.

The following was agreed for Executive and Committee meetings:

In addition to the above

The date, time and venue of each meeting will be made public in advance of each meeting.

At the end of each meeting the chair will sum up all action points which have been agreed.

At the beginning of the year the team will agree a set of groundrules which will apply throughout their term of office.

Meetings of members

A schedule of meetings will be established and published at the start of each academic year.

Items to be included in each meeting must be agreed by the Independant Chair 10 working days before the day of the meeting. An agenda for the meeting must be published at least 5 working days before the meeting.

In accordance with the constitution, for meetings held in addition to those scheduled at the start of the year an agenda will be published no less than 24 hours before the start of the meeting.

At the start of each meeting a member of the Executive Committee will explain the protocol for that meeting.

The Independent chair will be responsible for keeping time.

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