Petitions
Paper petitions
Paper petitions can be sent to:
Head of Legal and Democratic Services
Council Offices
Wallfields
Pegs Lane
Hertford
Hertfordshire
SG13 8EQ
Electronic petitions
Electronic petitions (e-petitions) can also be submitted via externally hosted websites, such as change.org, etc. You can also request the Council to host an online petition on the Council's website.
An e-petition can be created by a person of any age who lives, works or studies in East Herts.
To submit an e-petition you will need to be a registered user. On the e-petitions homepage select the 'Submit a new e-Petition' option and follow the prompted steps from there. Your online form will be submitted to the Democratic Services team who may contact you to discuss your e-petition before it goes live.
Your e-petition will need to include:
- A title
- A statement explicitly setting out what action you would like the Council to take.
- Any information which you feel is relevant to the e-petition and reasons why you consider the action requested to be necessary. You may include links to other relevant websites.
- A date for when your e-petition will go live on the website. It may take Democratic Services a couple of days to check your e-petition request and discuss any issues with you so please ensure that you submit the request a few days before you want the e-petition to go live.
- A date for when your e-petition will stop collecting signatures. In order to achieve the maximum impact, you may want to set this date so that the e-petition will be submitted prior to a date on which a debate is to be held or a decision taken on the issue. We will host your e-petition for up to 12 months but would expect most to be significantly less.
Presenting Your Petition to Council
If your petition has 150 or more signatures, it can be presented to a meeting of the Council. If you would like to present your petition to the Council, then please contact Democratic Services on 01279 655261 or democraticservices@eastherts.gov.uk at least 10 working days before the meeting for further information.
You will be invited to the Council meeting, at which you can speak for up to three minutes to explain the reasons for your petition. Although, the Council meeting is unable to debate your petition, the relevant Executive Member will respond to you at the meeting.
Further Information on Petitions
Petitions submitted to the Council must include a clear and concise statement covering the subject of the petition, what action the petitioners wish the Council to take and the name and address and signature of any person supporting the petition.
Petitions should be accompanied by contact details, including an address, for the petition organiser. This is the person we will contact to explain how we will respond to the petition. The contact details of the petition organiser will not be placed on the website. If the petition does not identify a petition organiser, we will contact signatories to the petition to agree who should act as the petition organiser.
Petitions which are considered to be vexatious, abusive or otherwise inappropriate will not be accepted. In the period immediately before an election or referendum we may need to deal with your petition differently - if this is the case we will explain the reasons and discuss the revised timescale which will apply.
If the petition applies to a planning or licensing application, is a statutory petition (for example requesting a referendum on having an elected mayor), or on a matter where there is already an existing right of appeal, such as Council tax banding and non-domestic rates, other procedures apply. Further information on all these procedures and how you can express your views is available below:
