TWEAKS could be made to the decision making process at Powys County Council, (PCC).

Councillors on the Democratic Services committee were told that the changes needed to be made due to alterations in the senior management structure at PCC.

Big strategic or policy decisions are made by PCC’s cabinet, but day to day operational decisions can be delegated and taken by council staff.

Head of legal services, Clive Pinney explained: “What we have done is try and update the constitution to reflect the changes in the leadership team, we have not done it for a very long time and there have been changes that we haven’t captured.

“All we’ve done is make the changes to reflect the current structure.”

Scrutiny manager and head of democratic services Wyn Richards added: “We have also spoken to heads of services as there are tweaks that they have highlighted that were’nt in the regulations, there is a question in terms of portfolio as they change very frequently.”

Mr Richards said that portfolio responsibilities would be listed separately so that changes to the briefs held by cabinet members would not need to see further changes to the constitution.

“It just makes life easier, ” added Mr Richards.

Cllr Jackie Charlton (Liberal Democrat – Llangattock), said: “There have been structural changes and many decisions were delegated to officers, but now it’s heads of service, can we have clarification why that has taken place?”

Mr Pinney answered: “The old constitution has a number of delegations for specific officers, people change quite regularly, and the job title also changes.

“What we are in the process of doing is putting in a brand new process of delegation, the new process I will be proposing, is the new delegations to the head of service and they have the ability to sub-delegate.

“We had officers below head of service named and that causes issues particularly if an individual is not around, who is going to take that duty?”

“We are always behind with it, when an amendment is made to the portfolio list by the leader and then we perhaps don’t have a (full) council meeting for a while, so we’re always in catchup mode with it.”

The changes will need to go in front of full council to be ratified.