Committee roles, responsibilities, operating guidelines and templates

The following are the respective roles and responsibilities in relation to functioning of School committees, together with the templates that must be used by the School’s Committees and operating guidelines.

Roles and Responsibilities

Convener/Chair

  • Chair meetings of the Committee (or, if not possible, make arrangements for an alternate to chair the meeting).
  • Ensure that meetings are quorate. Business may be conducted at meetings which are not quorate, however any decisions will need to be ratified, either by circulation or at a later, quorate, meeting.
  • Ensure that meetings are conducted in good order and that business is dealt with in accordance with the remit of the Committee.
  • Ensure that appropriate steps are taken to identify and deal with any potential conflicts of interest.
  • Approve the draft minute, prior to circulation to members.
  • Annually review the operation of the Committee, including its remit and membership and the effectiveness and efficiency with which it conducts its business.
  • In consultation with Committee Secretary, develop an annual schedule of business for the committee (if appropriate), standing items for meetings, and develop the agenda for meetings.

Committee Secretary

  • Prompt and support the Committee Convener/Chair in their role (see above)
  • Advise the Committee Convener/Chair on procedural matters.
  • Prepare draft agenda for Chair input; call for agenda items and prepare and circulate papers in advance of meetings.
  • Ensure that agendas, minutes and papers are distributed in a timely manner.
  • Take notes at meetings and prepare draft minutes of meeting for Chair approval.
  • Advise both attendees and non-attendees of actions or decisions which impact upon them as soon as possible after meeting.
  • Follow up with assigned action owners prior to next meeting to record status of action in papers to be circulated.
  • Advise Convener of positions becoming vacant and assist in the process of identifying and selecting representative members of the Committee from the relevant consistencies (this is generally an annual exercise and therefore requires co-ordination across all the School committees).
  • In consultation with the Convener/Chair agree and publish an annual schedule of meetings and business.
  • In consultation with Convener/Chair Identify any ‘reserved’ (ie private) items of business and make sure that they are dealt with appropriately; and identify open and closed papers for the purposes of Freedom of Information requests.

Templates and Operating Guidelines

School Committees must used the following templates:

In order to ensure consistency across the School, the School’s Committees* will adopt the following operating guidelines.  The Committee Secretary is responsible for ensuring alignment with these guidelines.

  • Committee templates – must be used (Agenda, Minutes, Ongoing Actions (where relevant as outlined on template), cover sheet for papers being presented
  • Agenda and papers circulated at least 5 working days prior to meeting to allow members time to consult on agenda content
  • Draft minutes to be circulated no more than 5 working days after meeting, or where that is not possible draft actions to be circulated within 5 working days after the meeting
  • Consistent use of paper referencing (based on calendar year not academic year):  YY:Committee alpha reference:PaperNumber.  For example: 23.SC.1
    • Committee references:  Strategy Committee (SC); Research Committee (RC); People & Culture (PC); Buildings Committee (BC); Health Safety & Wellbeing (HSW); Teaching Committee (TBC); Board of Studies (BoS); Ethics Committee (EC); Computing Strategy (CS).