Becoming a Candidate

As a Councillor, you will need to attend meetings. Some of these are held during the working day and others in the evening. For most meetings there will be papers which you will need to read beforehand. You are also likely to receive a lot of letters and telephone calls.

The full council meeting of all 42 Councillors is the ultimate decision-making body for North East Lincolnshire Council. This meeting cannot consider every single decision to be made, so the Council gives powers to make decisions – under what is called the scheme of delegation – to the cabinet, committees and panels.

The Cabinet – sometimes called the Executive – meets to consider major issues affecting the Borough of North East Lincolnshire. Our Cabinet has eight Councillors, each with individual areas of responsibility.

The Council’s scrutiny panels work like the select committees in Central Government and cover areas linked to the Cabinet members’ areas of responsibility – also called portfolios.

The Council also has a

Other working groups and panels are set up when needed.

The time commitment needed to attend meetings will depend on how many committees, panels etc. each Councillor is appointed to.

If you are in paid employment, your employer may give you paid time off to attend daytime meetings. Evening meetings start at 6:30pm or 7pm to allow time for those who work during the day to get there, and for those with caring responsibilities to make arrangements for evening cover.

There is no fixed length of time for meetings, but most are completed within two hours. If a meeting is likely to need more time than this, it will usually be clear from the agenda, supplied during the week before the meeting, that this is the case.

Most meetings are open to members of the public. We advertise dates and times and you can contact any of the democratic services officers for details.

Why not come along to a meeting and see for yourself what happens? You can find details of all meetings in our Meetings calendar section.