You can submit a petition to the city council about issues we have responsibility for or which are of major significance or general concern to the city.
We cannot accept a petition:
- if it relates to an identifiable person
- if it might lead to the council acting illegally
- if it clearly supports the financial interests of the person submitting the petition
- if it contains matters associated with political parties or organisations
- if it refers to a matter which is already the subject of legal proceedings
- if it is submitted from employees regarding terms and conditions of employment
- if it duplicates a previous petition submitted within the previous six months
Petitions must be received 14 days before the meeting of the council in order to be reported at the meeting; any petitions received after this date will be dealt with at the following meeting.
We do not accept petitions from other petitions websites.
If your petition is about a particular licensing or planning application then it will be dealt with and as part of that application, according to separate legislation.
If your petition has received between five and 99 signatures it will be reported to full council and referred to the relevant chief officer who will be responsible for ensuring the petition is responded to and taken into account in the decision-making process as appropriate.
If your petition has received at least 100 signatures it will be reported to full council, and the lead petitioner will be allowed to speak on the petition for three minutes. There will be no debate on the matter.
If a petition contains 5,000 or more signatures it will be debated by the full council. The lead petitioner will be given five minutes to present the petition at the meeting, after which councillors will discuss the petition. The council will decide how to respond to the petition at this meeting. They may decide:
- to take the action the petition requests
- not to take the action requested for reasons put forward in the debate
- to commission further investigation into the matter, for example by a relevant committee.
Where the issue is one on which the council executive is required to make the final decision, council will decide whether to make recommendations to inform that decision.