As a citizen you have a number of rights in your dealings with the council.
These are set out in more detail in article 3 of the constitution. Some of these are legal rights and others depend on the council's own policies. The local citizens advice bureau can advise you on your legal rights.
Where members of the public such as the parent of a schoolchild or a council tenant use specific council services, they have additional rights. These are not covered in the constitution.
As a citizen you can:
- Vote at local elections if registered
- Contact your local councillor about any matters that concern you
- Inspect the council's constitution (free of charge) or obtain a copy at a charge
- Attend meetings of the council, its committees and the cabinet - except where confidential matters are being discussed
- Petition to request a referendum on a mayoral form of executive - see part 1, page 4 of the constitution - May 2003 edition
- Attend formal meetings of the cabinet where decisions are being discussed
- Participate in meetings. For example making submissions, asking questions or presenting petitions to meetings of the council or the cabinet. You might participate as a witness at meetings of select committees
- Find out, from the executive's Forward Plan, when decisions are to be discussed and decided by the cabinet or executive councillors. The Forward Plan can be viewed on this website
- Inspect agendas, reports and background papers for any formal council body and any record of decisions made. You can find most of this information on the website
- Complain to the council about the delivery of council services. The website has details about the complaints process
- Complain to the ombudsman if you think the council has not followed its procedures properly. However, you should only do this after using the council's own complaints process
- Complain to the Standards Board for England if they have evidence which they think shows that a councillor has not followed the council's code of conduct
- Inspect the council's accounts and make your views known to the external auditor
As a citizen the council welcomes your participation in its work.
Access to information
You also have rights to access information about the council and its work and rights to information held by us. These include rights under The Data Protection Act of 1998, The Freedom of Information Act of 2000 and the right to attend local authority meetings and to have access to certain documents.