Last night’s (Thursday) Isle of Wight Council meeting ended with shouting and calls that an ‘undemocratic vote’ was taking place — after a meeting went on past 9pm.
As part of the Isle of Wight Council’s constitution, a regular full council meeting can only run for three hours.
Typically, it starts at 6pm and ends at 9pm when business is stopped, regardless of where it stands.
Yesterday, however, the council chamber erupted after a decision was made to continue a vote past 9pm.
You can watch the meeting here:
Councillors had been debating a motion put forward by Cllr Karl Love for 20 minutes — about whether a full consultation with ‘all Island citizens’ was to be held over the change to move to a committee system — and were halfway through a vote when the clock struck 9pm.
Cllr Geoff Brodie led calls the meeting should be ‘terminated’ as it was 9pm and the vote could no longer continue.
The council’s senior governance advisor and acting monitoring officer for the meeting, Francis Fernandes, said the meeting could continue as it was down to the discretion of the chair, Cllr Claire Critchison.
Cllr Critchison said the vote could continue and the meeting would carry on until it finished.
However, Cllr Brodie said the meetings had been an “absolute shambles” and it was breaking the constitution.
Members of the Empowering Islanders group — minus Cllr Dave Adams who had walked out shortly after 9pm — said it was an ‘unconstitutional vote’ so they voted against.
The vote fell and the meeting finished at 9.05pm.
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