Published Meetings and Agendas
Council committees, board and trustee meetings, patient participation groups, works councils, school governing bodies, AGMs, planning and licensing panels — all the same shape. A body holds a meeting with an agenda of items, some of which are not for everyone.
Where to find it
Architect Panel → Communication:
- Published Meetings — meetings, their agendas and publication state
- Meeting Bodies — the committees, boards and panels that meet
- Meeting Exemption Reasons — the grounds you may cite for closing an item
Architect Panel → Data:
- Compilations — the agenda pack, assembled and paginated
- Documents — reports, minutes and recordings
The published agenda is served on a public page with no login required.
Exposure is three-valued — and this is the important part
In almost every regime that has one, the existence of a closed item is public — its number, its title and the reason it is closed — while its report is not.
A system that hid the whole item would breach the same rules it was built to satisfy. One that published everything would breach them the other way. So exposure has three settings, not two:
- Full — title, summary and documents are all public.
- Title only — the title and the cited exemption reason are public; the summary and documents are not.
- Withheld — only the fact that an item exists at that number.
"Title only" is the setting most exempt items should use, and the one people reach for least because two-valued thinking suggests hiding it entirely. Getting this right is the difference between a compliant agenda and a complaint.
Citing a reason
Meeting Exemption Reasons holds the grounds you may cite. Configure these to match the schedule your regime actually uses so members select from real grounds rather than typing free text — a cited reason that does not correspond to a legal ground is worse than no reason.
Classification drives exemption
Where a report is classified, that classification informs what may be published. The two systems connect, so an item carrying a restricted report does not need its exemption managing separately from the report's own sensitivity.
The agenda pack
The pack is a compilation — reports assembled in agenda order, paginated and indexed, as a single document. That is what members receive and what gets published, and building it from the items means it cannot disagree with the agenda.
Publication timing
The Meetings task publishes agendas whose time has come, so you can prepare an agenda in advance and have it appear on the statutory publication date without anybody doing it manually on the day.
That matters: most regimes require publication a set number of clear days before the meeting, and "clear days" excludes both ends. Set the publication date deliberately rather than counting backwards in your head.
Minutes and recordings
Minutes and any recording are documents attached to the meeting, published under the same exposure rules as the items they relate to.
Worked example — a district council
The Licensing Sub-Committee is a body. Each hearing is a meeting with numbered items. Items 1 to 6 are Full. Item 7 concerns an individual's personal circumstances and is Title Only, citing the relevant exemption ground — so the public agenda shows "Item 7 — Application by [redacted]: exempt under ground 1" rather than a gap. The pack publishes five clear days ahead automatically; the minutes follow, with item 7's minute withheld.
Recommendations
- Default exempt items to Title Only, not Withheld. Withheld is for the rare case where even the title discloses.
- Configure exemption reasons from your actual legal schedule.
- Set publication dates from the clear-days rule, and let the task publish.
- Check the public page as a member of the public would, logged out, before the first real meeting.