From time to time council will hold workshops. The purpose of a workshop or briefing is to prepare councillors with the appropriate background and knowledge to make robust decisions for their communities, and to allow discussion among and between elected members and council staff. Workshops are part of an educative phase of the council’s decision making process. Workshops can not be used to make final decisions, as final decisions and resolutions cannot lawfully be made outside the context of a properly constituted meeting.
It is intended that all workshops are open to the public in accordance with requirements of the Local Government Act 2002, that ‘….a local authority should conduct its business in an open, transparent and democratically accountable manner….’
The reasons for excluding the public from a workshop are detailed in Section 7 of the Local Government Official Information Meetings Act 1987.