2.1 How do councils make decisions?

Every council in Scotland will have meetings of the ‘full council’, which involves every councillor taking part in a meeting and voting on the issues that are brought before them.

Provisions in the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 allow local authorities to devolve most decision-making to a committee, sub-committee or officers of the council. Local authorities in Scotland must take corporate decisions: there is no legal provision for policies being made by individual councillors.

These provisions allow local authorities to decide what decision-making arrangements they wish to have, which broadly follow one of two structures: a committee or cabinet/executive system.

Committee system

Around two-thirds of councils in Scotland operate a committee system. The remit for committees will be decided by the council and specified within its constitutional documents.

Committees are set up to have a mixture of responsibilities, such as policy development, decision-making and scrutinising the performance of council services.

Committees can be set up to cover specific service areas, such as education, or to have broader, thematic remits: children and young people, for example. There are pros and cons for each type of committee and it is up to the council to decide what will work best for them.

If you are elected and are chosen to serve on a committee, you will need to familiarise yourself with that committee’s remit and what your role is as a committee member.

Cabinet/executive system

Around one-third of councils operate a cabinet or executive system, whereby a small ‘executive’ group of councillors take most of the decisions. In legal terms, the cabinet or executive is still a committee.

Where an executive or cabinet model is chosen, it is necessary to create much more forceful structures to scrutinise these executive bodies. This tends to take the form of scrutiny committees (or panels) where non-executive or non-cabinet councillors can question and challenge the performance of the executive or cabinet in a manner that will enable public debate.

This type of system can allow for more streamlined decision-making; however, critics believe that it is less democratic.