“Just a minute!”

People often talk about the importance of decision-making as part of overall good governance. They will frequently refer to the quality of reports, the clarity of schemes of delegation, the adequacy of scrutiny, etc, but seldom do they mention the vital role that humble minutes take in this process. Invariably taken for granted and regarded as a formality, the record of decisions taken is often the only means of knowing whether what a council does is lawful.

The Law

Schedule 12 Paragraph 41 of the Local Government Act 1972 outlines precise, mandatory rules for how local authorities in England and Wales must record, sign, and store their meeting minutes.

Minutes must be drawn up and entered into a dedicated book. Alternatively, they may be recorded on consecutively numbered loose-leaf pages, provided each page is initialled and the final page is signed.

The minutes must be signed at the same meeting, or at the next suitable meeting, by the person presiding over it (the Chair).

The Act gives signed minutes immediate status in a court of law:

Automatic Evidence: Any minute that purports to be properly signed must be received as legal evidence without further proof.
Presumption of Validity: Until the contrary is proven, a meeting that has signed minutes is legally deemed to have been duly convened and held, and all participating members are assumed to have been properly qualified to vote.

The Act strictly guards the democratic right of local residents to view these records:

The Six-Year Rule: Under Section 100C, the minutes of a principal council must be kept open for public inspection at the council offices for at least six years from the date of the meeting.
Exempt Information: If a council goes into a private session to discuss "exempt" items (like sensitive commercial contracts or personal data), those specific sections can be excluded from the public minutes. However, the council must provide a coherent summary of those proceedings to ensure transparency.

Purpose

The minutes of a council or committee meeting cannot be successfully written without a clear understanding of their fundamental purpose, which is:

1. To record the business actually transacted at a meeting

2. To establish an accurate record of the decisions taken

3. To comply with legal requirements

Where minutes are used as the vehicle to bring committee proposals before the full council, they need also:

4. To ensure the record is sufficiently self-explanatory to enable the council to make a decision in full possession of the relevant facts

5. To provide adequate information about the authority’s business for the press and public

Style

The obligation to keep minutes of proceedings can be met by extreme brevity (provided they are intelligible), for the law does not prescribe the form in which minutes should be written up. Indeed, there is no right or wrong way to prepare minutes. The form adopted by any particular council is a matter of individual choice or local custom. However, a few cardinal principles should be borne in mind:

Brief – be precise and concise, recording exactly what was done and no more. Be selective – it should not be a verbatim record but a summary of proceedings that involves only the essence of the debate and the decision on every item of business dealt with. It is rarely necessary to reproduce, however summarily, what a particular speaker said.
Self-contained – complete in itself and intelligible without reference to other documents. By all means refer to supporting material, e.g. an officer’s report, but don’t rely on it for interpretation or to be understood.
Decisive – leave no ambiguity or doubt as to the decisions; use a crisp active (not passive) style, eliminating adjectives. Clarity is an indispensable part of the accuracy of the record.

Content

An individual minute should consist of:

A heading – brief and explanatory of the subject-matter
A preamble or narrative – but only if it serves a purpose. It can record the tenor of the discussion but in an impersonal way, i.e. not attributing views to particular members and not recording a discursive description of what was said, which would leave it open to charges that individual views have been misinterpreted or unfairly summarised. Put simply, the contribution of individual members to a debate should never be minuted. The names of proposers and seconders of motions should not normally be recorded either.
A resolution and any reasons for a decision.

Approval

Minutes are written up, approved in draft by the Chair and submitted for confirmation to the next meeting. The term ‘confirmation’ is misleading. Minutes do not require confirmation in the ordinary sense of the word: the decisions taken at a meeting are of immediate effect and don’t depend on their first being written up and subsequently approved and signed at the next meeting. The minutes are merely a record of what has already taken place but their confirmation has important legal consequences.

The act of confirmation does not require minutes to be read nor need a copy have been circulated beforehand to members.

Accuracy

The only question that can properly arise on confirmation of minutes is their accuracy, and any question of accuracy should be raised by motion. There should be no resumption of debate on the items recorded in the minutes, nor should the minutes be used as the basis for reporting subsequent action.

The accuracy of minutes can only be challenged and, if appropriate, corrected by the council or committee when they come before it for confirmation.

The Chair must sign and initial each page of the minutes unless they suspect an inaccuracy. Any minute so signed may be legally received as evidence of the proceedings, the meeting being duly convened and the members present being duly qualified.

That doesn’t mean that a signed minute is unchallengeable proof of the events recorded in them. It is open to anyone to seek to prove in court that the minutes are not a true record of what took place, but the courts will not lightly set aside properly authenticated minutes.

Once the minutes have been confirmed they must not be altered in any circumstances whatsoever. If, when a meeting is asked to confirm the minutes of the preceding meeting, it is agreed that there is an inaccuracy that needs to be corrected, this should be duly noted in the minute recording the signing of the minutes.

If an inaccuracy is discovered after the minutes have been signed, then the inaccuracy should be retrospectively corrected by resolution. However, the particular minute challenged and agreed to be inaccurate should never be altered, but instead a note should be made against the disputed minute indicating its subsequent correction.

Once the minutes have been confirmed, the committee clerk’s notes should be destroyed. The reason for this is that there should be no other record, however informal, that might cast doubt on the correctness of the official record.

Geoff Wild is a Legal and Governance Consultant. This is the latest in a series of articles he has written – previous contributions include: