Petitions

When we receive your petition, the Council will take the following steps:

• An acknowledgement will be sent to the petition organiser within ten working days of receiving the petition. It will let them know what we plan to do with the petition and when they can expect to hear from us again.
• If we can do what your petition asks for, the acknowledgement may confirm that we have taken the action requested and the petition will be closed.
• If the petition has enough signatures to automatically trigger a council debate (5% of the population), or a senior officer giving evidence, then the acknowledgement will confirm this and tell you when and where the meeting will take place.
• If the petition needs more investigation, we will tell you the steps we plan to take.
• This petition scheme does not apply to the following:-
  • to a planning or licensing application
  • a statutory petition (for example requesting a referendum on having an elected mayor)
  • on a matter where there is already an existing right of appeal, such as council tax banding and non-domestic rates
• We will not take action on any petition which we consider to be vexatious, abusive or otherwise inappropriate and will explain the reasons for this in our acknowledgement of the petition.
• To ensure that people know what we are doing in response to the petitions we receive, the details of all the petitions submitted to us will be published on our website, except in cases where this would be inappropriate.