Submit your petition

You can either:

• submit an e-petition
• email a scanned copy of a paper petition to us
• post a paper petition to us

Submitting both paper and electronic petitions

You can submit a petition in paper and electronic form but repeated names should be removed by the lead petitioner. Both forms should run for the same period of time and must be submitted together.

When submitting a paper petition please let us know if you are running an e-petition as well, and vice-versa, so that this can be highlighted on the website and officers are able to include both details in the final count.

Officer evidence

Petitions may ask for a senior council officer to give evidence at a public meeting about something which the officer is responsible for as part of their job.

If such a petition contains at least 1,100 signatures, the relevant senior officer will give evidence at a public meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee.

Submitting a petition following an election or referendum

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 a petition does not follow the guidelines set out above, we may decide not to do anything further with it. In that case, we will write to you to explain the reasons.

Other situations where we will deal with your petition differently

Alternative procedures 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
• relates to a matter where there is already an existing right of appeal, such as Council Tax banding and Business Rates