Petitions

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Introduction

Somerset Council welcomes petitions and recognises that they are one way in which people can let us know their concerns. Councils have discretion on how petitions are approached locally. This is Somerset Council’s Petition Scheme.

What is considered a petition

The Council treats as a petition:

Any communication which is identified as being a petition.
Communication that seems to us that it is intended to be a petition and has a minimum of 50 signatories of people who live, work or study in the Somerset Council area.

Petitions of 5000 signatures (individually or collectively) will be treated as Large Petitions.

When a petition is received by the Council which relates to a local matter (particularly affecting a specific ward), the Council will notify each relevant local Councillor.

How to submit a Petition

Petitions can be posted, emailed or delivered by hand at any of our offices.

E-petitions must follow the same guidelines as paper petitions. All e-petitions will run for 28 days (unless the Monitoring Officer agrees an alternative timescale) to ensure that the Council’s decision-making process is not delayed. The petition will need to be checked before it is published online and if the Council is unable to publish it, an officer will contact the Petition Organiser to explain why.

Petitions can be presented at Council meetings by placing the petition on the front table.

Completed petitions need to be given to the Council for the attention of the Monitoring Officer

Somerset Council
County Hall
The Crescent
Taunton
Somerset
TA1 4DY

Email: democraticservicesteam@somerset.gov.uk

Submit a petition online

All petitions submitted to Somerset Council will receive an acknowledgement from the Council within 3 clear working days of receipt.

If the petition is not valid it will be returned to the Petition Organiser with an explanation within 10 clear working days of receipt.

If the petition is valid the Petition Organiser will then be informed of how the petition will be handled within 20 clear working days of acknowledgement.

If the Petition Organiser is submitting the petition in response to a Council consultation or on a specific matter, it is important to identify the matter which it relates to, so that the Council can ensure that the petition is considered along with the original matter. See below for further guidance.

Please be aware any petition submitted to the Council will be publicly available and may form part of an agenda and published on the Council’s website.

A petition must include:

What it is about – it must relate to a responsibility of the Council (this must be on each page of the petition)
What the petitioner wants the Council to do (this must be on each page of the petition).
Name of everyone who supports the petition must be set out in an identifiable way.
For paper petitions the signature of each petitioner.
The name and contact details of the “petition organiser” or someone the petition organiser would like any correspondence about the petition to be sent. This can be either a postal or an email address. The Petition Organiser may include the addresses of petitioners, which may be useful to the Council, for example, in assessing the degree of local support or opposition to a particular matter, but this is not essential.

The Council’s Petition Scheme can be found here: