Exeter City Council appears to believe that the public it serves has no role in contributing to decisions on how it functions.

All Councils have constitutions which set out how they must do their business. They are detailed, turgid, and not easy to navigate. Exeter’s – see here for a heavy read of its 380 pages – is fairly typical. Much of the detailed but important procedural stuff is set out in pages of Standing Orders.

On page 3 of a report for the Council’s Strategic Scrutiny Committee on 23 January, Deputy Leader Cllr Laura Wright noted that there was to be a review of the constitution. It seemed to me worth planting the idea that the public – okay, not many – might have an interest not just in what decisions the council took but in how they reached those decisions, including the make-up and functioning of committees. And so they would have useful external perspectives to bring to the constitution review.

For example, the constitution contains a section known as “the Exeter Conventions”. 10 years ago the Conventions also existed but in a substantively different form. On 4 June 2015 a one-item Extraordinary Meeting of the Council accepted a recommendation from a one-item Special Meeting of the Executive held the previous day to change the rule so that Scrutiny Chairs and Deputy Chairs could be drawn from any political group and not, as was then the case, only from opposition groups.

Four years later, the Labour leadership returned to the taming of the scrutiny function and passed a series of changes, which I described in an Exeter Observer article at the time. The total effect was to reduce opportunities for opposition councillors and members of the public to challenge council actions.

A review presented a chance not only to reverse these retrograde steps but also to create new opportunities for structured conversations between public, councillors, and officers. The current arrangements for formal in-person public engagement involve a total of 15 minutes for a questions session, and only at specified meetings, with a limit for each person of one question (sic) plus one supplementary and that’s it. Devon County Council, not renowned for its openness, does at least allow “representations” as well as questions at certain meetings.

How much better to open this up, perhaps at special meetings, for a sensible dialogue to be allowed and for the public to give presentations on relevant topics leading to discussion?

So I put down the following question for last week’s scrutiny meeting:

“The Deputy Leader’s report refers to a forthcoming review of the Constitution. Will the Council seek views from Exeter’s civil society organisations and/or the public before finalising proposals for change?”

I expected the answer at least to nod in the direction of openness and engagement. I was wrong.

Councillor Wright gave an unequivocal no. Her first reason was that there was no legal obligation on the council to consult. To which the answer is: so what? The Council does many things that it is not legally required to, ranging from the provision of what’s left of the public loos to an (over?) active communications function

She went on to say that this was a purely internal matter, with no major changes expected. One aim was to make the document more accessible to the public. The process would be overseen by councillors.

Now I like Councillor Wright and regard her as a caring, committed, competent and honest person. So the charitable side of me thought that she was compelled to spout this uninspiring guff, in her role as a member of the Executive.

It’s now a truism to say that public trust in politics and politicians is at an all-time low. So it’s disappointing to see Exeter Labour (probably with the full support of some senior officers) closing the door on innovative ideas for changing the way it does business.

But then again, perhaps we should not be too surprised at this attitude of keeping us plebs at arm’s length. Later in the same meeting Labour’s Cllr Yvonne Atkinson intervened to pour cold water on a well-supported proposal for including market traders in the city centre retail mix. Cllr Atkinson said that we didn’t want markets because they were run by low-skilled people whereas Exeter’s vision was of a city filled with high-skilled high-value people driving world-class innovation as envisaged in the Council’s Corporate Plan.

So there!