My request for information relates to the arrangements applied to the (Exeter) HATOC meeting on 23rd January 2024
I would be grateful to know please who made the decisions to:
1. Allow specific pro campaigners access to the meeting room, without queuing.
There was no specific decision on this matter. In the main, security staff took charge of the members of public wanting to attend the meeting. There was not a queue, but rather people waiting outside to see if there was space available in the committee room to sit. People were not identified as either ‘pro’ or ‘anti’ campaigners. Neither the team nor the security staff would have known exactly who was who. The priority was members of the public who had registered to speak to be seated in the Committee room. We would do this for any Committee meeting when capacity might be an issue (i.e. ensure registered speakers are accommodated in the same room as the meeting) in order that they can address the Committee.
When the Committee room was full to capacity, an adjacent committee overflow room was made available to watch on screen the live meeting as it took place. This is not something we routinely do, but the Head of Democratic Services asked that an overflow room be organised to accommodate as best we could the numbers that we anticipated arriving, so they could also view the livestream of the meeting. The alternative was to not do this and when the room was full, there would be no additional space.
A member of the team was at the door to the Daw Room and advised attendees that those who had pre-registered to speak would be given preference to sit in the room in line with usual practice and we had quite a number of registered speakers. That member of the team was challenged at the time, but they explained we could only allow a certain number in the room due to safety / fire safety regulations etc. However, when people left the meeting room, others came in to take their place.
2. To ensure that as many of the anti campaigners as possible were diverted to ante room.
There was no decision to divert anti-campaigners to the overflow room. The additional room was set up (requested by the Head of Democratic Services) to allow people who had not registered to speak to be able to view the meeting and listen to the debate. As an aside, a member of the Democratic Services team was challenged by somebody in the other overflow room about this and they explained the reasoning for this.