50 signatures reached
To: Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council
Reduce threshold for qualifying petitions
Rotherham Council's constitution requires a petition to bear the signatures of at least 5% of the electorate in order to trigger a debate in full Council. This equates to 9555 signatures; a threshold that, to our knowledge has ever been met. There is no legal requirement for Rotherham Council to set the threshold so high. Indeed Sheffield City Council (with a population twice that of Rotherham) requires 5000 signatures. Hull City Council (with a similar population to Rotherham) requires 1500 signatures.
We call upon Rotherham Council to review its petition threshold and to reduce it to 1500 in order that issues of genuine public interest can be debated by the full Council.
Why is this important?
A recent petition against the closure of Sure Start children's centres containing 6,000 signatures was insufficient to trigger a debate in full Council. This stifled debate and thus undermined democracy.
1500 signatures should be sufficient evidence of widespread public feeling on any given issue and therefore should be enough to trigger a debate in full Council.
