Ben Houchen to hold question time events across Tees Valley
Proposals being put forward by Conservative Mayor, Ben Houchen, would see him undertake in-person question time events twice a year in a variety of locations across the combined authority. Additionally, he would participate in a monthly phone-in on BBC Radio Tees.
The proposals, which will be voted on by Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) Cabinet at their meeting on March 28, would also see changes to arrangements for public participation: notably, the current system for submitting questions to committees would be removed. Additionally, going forward, TVCA plans to record its public meetings and post them on YouTube within five working days.
The report being presented to Cabinet sets out the aim to bring the TVCA into line with other combined authorities when it comes to scrutiny. Proposals for a Mayoral Question Time (MQT) were previously published in November 2023. Mayor Houchen has confirmed that, if approved, a MQT programme will begin in May of this year.
The programme is set to be made up of two parts. Firstly, Mayor Houchen will participate in an hour-long phone-in once a month on BBC Radio Tees (hosted by an independent journalist), where members of the public will be able to “directly question” the mayor.
The second aspect will be two in-person events per calendar year, also set to be chaired by an independent journalist. Members of the public will be able to submit questions to the chair, who will then put them to the mayor.
These sessions are set to be ticketed (free of charge), which is the same system used by Mayor Andy Burnham, who leads the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. Mayor Burnham has hosted question time events since June 2017.
The location of Mr Houchen’s in-person MQTs is set to rotate around the five local authority areas. The sessions are to be recorded and published on YouTube within five working days.
When it comes to questions submitted by members of the public to TVCA, the authority currently follows the “Public Participation Protocol”, which sees members of the public write their questions and submit them to the relevant committee (for example, Audit and Governance or Transport).
Written answers are provided by officers within 10 days and questions deemed to be not relevant are rejected by officers.
Some 144 questions have recently been submitted in relation to four TVCA meetings, which the authority deems to be a lot, as well as viewing a number of questions as unrelated to papers.
“Where there is a legitimate question to answer, it is important that TVCA does so, but currently hours of director and officer time are being used pointing to readily available resources, reducing capacity. TVCA believes this is not an effective use of public money and resources,” papers explain.
TVCA research has shown examples of mayoral combined authorities that operate MQT do not have provision for public questions. Whereas, combined authorities that do not have MQT accept public questions, but significantly less than TVCA currently do.
With a MQT set to begin in May 2025, it is proposed that the Public Participation Protocol is to be removed from the TVCA Constitution, and so the dozens of questions regularly submitted to each meeting will soon be a thing of the past.
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The final change set to come into effect is “to aid and ensure further accessibility”. So, from April 1, 2025, all statutory meetings of the TVCA are set to be recorded and published on YouTube within five working days following the meeting taking place. This will apply to TVCA Cabinet, TVCA Overview and Scrutiny Committee, TVCA Audit and Governance Committee and TVCA Transport Committee.
The cabinet is being asked to approve the proposals that would introduce the MQT programme as well as the changes to the TVCA Constitution that would see the removal of the current system of receiving questions from the public.
Leaders of the five local authorities will decide whether they back the proposals at the meeting, which is open to the public, on Friday March 28, 10am, taking place at Teesside Airport Business Suite.