Attending meetings
Meetings are held in public, and you are welcome to attend and observe.
Meeting dates and start times are on the calendar, are held at the Town Hall on St Aldate's, Oxford, and are livestreamed on our YouTube Channel.
On occasions the meeting will agree to consider an item in private and if this is the case you will be asked to leave. This happens infrequently and within very limited circumstances that you will see on the agenda and listed in the Council’s constitution.
Participating in meetings
You can address Council on any item on the agenda or anything the City Council is responsible for or that directly affects people in the city at an ordinary meeting. You can only make an address about the budget at the budget council meeting. There will be no addresses at Annual Council.
Agendas are published 5 clear workings days in advance of a meeting. To speak on an agenda item, please email the Director of Law, Governance and Strategy (Democraticservices@oxford.gov.uk) by 5pm, three clear working days ahead of the meeting with your name and contact details, a draft of your address and if applicable, the agenda item you wish to speak on. You will have a maximum of five minutes to speak. No supplementary addresses are permitted.
The deadline for submitting an address is included within the agenda.
The Director of Law, Governance and Strategy can reject a public address or a question on notice by a councillor, and the Lord Mayor can reject an address or question without notice, if:
- it is not about something the Council is responsible for, unless it directly affects people in the City, the Council is able to make representations on the issue.
- In all cases where it is considered potentially defamatory, or otherwise frivolous, trivial or offensive
- it requires the Council to make public exempt or confidential information
- it relates to individual personal circumstances
- a substantially similar question or address has been submitted on the topic within the last six months, whether or not by the same individual
- the request is made in relation to a matter for decision before Council but relates solely to the wider topic and not the recommendations for consideration
Please note that public addresses will be professionally filmed and posted online by the Council and may also be recorded and posted online by any person attending the meeting.
If others wish to address Council on the same issue you will have to share your five minutes' speaking time.
If your submission relates to a matter for decision in Part 1 of the meeting, you will speak shortly after 5pm.
If it does not relate to a matter for decision at the meeting or is for a matter in Part 2 you will speak at around 7pm.
Meeting agenda
All agendas are available on our website.
These are published five working days before the meeting.
The Briefing Note (Supplementary Agenda) is published the working day before the meeting.
You can register for alerts for agendas.
Upcoming agenda items
The Forward Plan gives information about all the decisions that the Council is expected to take over the next three months.
Recording meetings
You are able to record meetings using your own equipment. To allow you to do this without disrupting the meeting we have set a filming and recording protocol which we would ask you to read.
All full Council meetings are recorded and live-streamed on the Council’s YouTube channel. These recordings are available for viewing on YouTube.
