Two new Policy Development and Decision Groups have been introduced at Torbay Council to improve the way decisions are made.

The first Policy Development and Decision Group which deals with issues under the council’s Joint Commissioning Team gets underway next week. It follows the first Joint Operations group meeting last month.

Torbay’s elected Mayor made the decision in August to replace the former Policy Development Groups (PDGs) with the new public groups, which are made up of the Mayor and the Executive Leads. The groups operate as Executive Committees and hold informal policy development sessions and decision making sessions. The decision making sessions are where the Mayor now makes his Executive decisions, following a recommendation from the Policy Development and Decision Group, instead of at meetings of the Council.

The new sessions are public meetings and all Council members can also attend if they wish. Councillors and members of the public can speak at these meets with the agreement of the Chairman.

Mayor, Gordon Oliver said: “Before I made this change, a large majority of my executive decisions were made in Council meetings, so now fewer items are taken to Council . The new Policy Development and Decision Groups also provide the time and space to have informal, early discussions on a range of issues in a public arena. I hope this will encourage more people to become engaged in the development of policies and offers more transparency to the decision making process.”

The very first Policy Development and Decision Group for the Joint Commissioning Team will take place at 2pm on Tuesday 18 October, in the Meadfoot Room, Town Hall.

Topics on the agenda include:

• An update on the Children's Services Improvement Plan
• An update on the transforming care partnership and integrated personal commissioning
• A presentation on school place planning
• Torbay's proposed strategy for Educational Excellence Everywhere 2016/2020
• The proposed Annual Youth Justice Plan

More information can be found on the Policy Development and Decision Group page.

A full list of all Torbay Council meetings can be found on the Find a meeting page.