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Petitions Scheme

Contents 

Submitting a petition

Petitions submitted to the Council must include: 

  • A clear and concise statement covering the subject of the petition. It should state what action the petitioners wish the Council to take.
  • The contact details of the lead petitioner, including an address and/or telephone/email details. This is the person the Council will contact to explain the process for considering petitions. The contact details of the lead petitioner or any of the petitioners will not be published by the Council. If the petition does not identify a lead petitioner, we will contact signatories to the petition to agree who should act as the lead petitioner.
  • The name, address and signature of any person supporting the petition and email address if it is an e-petition

To be accepted by the Council, a petition must relate to the provision of local services for which the Council has responsibility. Democratic Services can provide advice and support if you are unsure what these services are.

Anyone who lives, works or studies in the local authority area, including under 18’s, can sign or organise a petition. The Council will take into account identifiable signatures of people who provide valid addresses, where they live, work or study in the area.

People can only sign a petition once. If they sign the petition online, they will be asked to verify their e-mail address. People cannot sign both an online and a paper petition, and may be removed if it is proven that a petitioner has signed more than once.

The Council reserves the right to verify signatories as required. We must be able to identify that the people signing the petition live work or study in Bassetlaw. A valid entry on a petition will contain the name, Bassetlaw address and signature of the person supporting the petition. People signing the petition can put their work or study address, as long as this is based within the geographical boundaries of the council.

Entries that do not meet these requirements will be rejected and not counted towards the total number. You can use the blank entry sheet as a template.

Paper petitions can be sent to:

Democratic Services
Bassetlaw District Council
Potter Street
Worksop
S80 2AH

Or, a petition can be created, signed and submitted online.

(Note: Please refer to the guidance on the process for submitting, signing and processing an e-petition (which does not form part of the Petitions Scheme).

If you chose to use an alternative petition system other than the Council’s own system (e.g. Change.org), you will either need to print a copy of the petition  statement and corresponding signatures and send it to us by post to the above  address, or email an electronic copy to elections@bassetlaw.gov.uk

You can run an online petition at the same time as a paper petition, combining the two before sending them to the Council. You should send the paper petition to the Council at the same time as the closing date of the online petition so that all of the signatures will be counted at the same time.

Once a petition has been received, no further signatures will be accepted and no similar petition will be accepted within 6 months of written confirmation of verification being sent.

An e-petition will be hosted for a period of 3 months. This is an appropriate time to allow an issue to be responded to with signatures and a response from the Council.

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

What will the Council do when it receives my petition?

An acknowledgement will be sent to the petition organiser within 10 working days of receiving the petition. It will let them know what we plan to do with the petition and when they can expect to hear from us again. It will also be published on our website, although the contact details of the petition organiser will not be placed on the website.

If we can do what your petition asks for, the acknowledgement may confirm that we have taken the action requested and the petition will be closed. If the petition has enough signatures to trigger a Council debate, or a senior officer giving evidence, then the acknowledgement will confirm this and tell you when and where the meeting will take place. If the petition needs more investigation, we will tell you the steps we plan to take.

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 these procedures are available on request.

We will not take action on any petition which we consider to be vexatious, abusive or otherwise inappropriate and will explain the reasons for this in our acknowledgement of the petition.

To ensure that people know what we are doing in response to the petitions we receive, details of all petitions submitted to us will be published on our website, except in cases where this would be inappropriate.

Whenever possible we will also publish all correspondence relating to the petition (all personal details will be removed).

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.

How will the council respond to petitions?

Our response to a petition will depend on what a petition asks for and how many people have signed it, but may include one or more of the following:

  • taking the action requested in the petition 
  • considering the petition at a Council meeting
  • holding an inquiry into the matter
  • undertaking research into the matter
  • holding a public meeting
  • holding a consultation 
  • holding a meeting with petitioners
  • referring to the petition for consideration to the Council's Overview and Scrutiny Committee*
  • calling a referendum 
  • writing to the petition organiser setting out our views about the request in the petition

*Overview and Scrutiny Committees are committees of Councillors who are responsible for scrutinising the work of the Council – in other words, the Overview and Scrutiny Committee has the power to hold the Council’s decision makers to account.

In addition to these steps, the Council will consider all the specific actions it can potentially take on the issues highlighted in a petition. The table below gives some examples.

Petition Subject Appropriate Steps
Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB)

As the elected representatives of your local area, as social landlord and licensing authority, the Council has a significant role to play in tackling antisocial behaviour. When responding to petitions on ASB, we will consider in consultation with our local partners, all the options available to us including the wide range of powers and mechanisms we have to intervene as part of our role as social landlord and licensing authority.

For example, we will work with the neighbourhood policing team in the affected area to identify what action might be taken including what role CCTV might play, consider identifying a dedicated contact within the Council to liaise with the community and neighbourhood partners on issues of ASB in the area in question and, where appropriate, we will alert the crime and disorder reduction partnership and crime and disorder Overview and Scrutiny Committee to the issues highlighted in the petition.

If your petition is about something that a different Council is responsible for we forward the petition to the other Council and we will notify you of the action we have taken.

Full Council debates

If a petition contains 2,500 or more signatures it will be debated by the full Council unless it is a petition asking for a senior council officer to give evidence at a public meeting. This means that the issue raised in the petition will be discussed at a meeting which all Councillors can attend.

The Council will endeavour to consider the petition at its next ordinary meeting, although on some occasions this may not be possible and consideration will then take place at the following meeting.

If you wish to present your petition to a particular meeting of the Council, you should must ensure 
your petition is submitted to Democratic Services at least 10 working days before the meeting you 
wish to speak at. This is to ensure that there is time to check that the petition meets our the 
requirements of the Scheme and if appropriate to arrange for the petition to be included on the 
agenda of the meeting.

The petition organiser will be given five minutes to present the petition at the meeting and the petition will then be discussed by Councillors for a maximum of 30 minutes.

The Council will decide how to respond to the petition at this meeting. They may decide to take the action the petition requests, not to take the action requested for reasons put forward in the debate, or to commission further investigation into the matter, for example by a relevant committee. Where the issue is one on which the Council’s executive are required to make the final decision, the Council will decide whether to make recommendations to inform that decision. The petition organiser will receive written confirmation of this decision. This confirmation will also be published on our website.

Officer Evidence

Your petition may ask for a senior Council officer to be called to give evidence at a Council meeting which is open to the public meeting about something for which the officer is responsible as part of their job. For example, your petition may ask a senior Council officer to explain progress on an issue, or to explain the advice given to elected members to enable them to make a particular decision.

If your petition contains at least 750 signatures, the relevant senior officer will give evidence at a public meeting of one of the Council’s overview and scrutiny committee. Senior staff that can be called upon include the Council’s Management team, comprising the Chief Executive and Directors and the Council’s Heads of Service.

You should be aware that the Overview and Scrutiny Committee may decide that it would be more appropriate for another officer to give evidence instead of any officer named in the petition – for instance if the named officer has changed jobs. The Committee may also decide to call the relevant Councillor to attend the meeting.

Committee members will ask the questions at this meeting, but you will be able to suggest questions to the Chair of the Committee by contacting the Democratic Services Officer at least working five days before the meeting. The Lead Petitioner will be invited to present their petition for a maximum of five minutes.

What can I do if I feel my petition has not been dealt with properly?

If you feel that we have not dealt with your petition properly, the petition organiser has the right to request that the Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee review the steps that the Council has taken in response to your petition. It is helpful to everyone, and can improve the prospects for a review if the petition organiser gives a short explanation of the reasons why the Council’s response is not considered to be adequate.

The Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee will endeavour to consider your request at its next meeting, although on some occasions this may not be possible and consideration will take place at the following meeting. Should the Overview and Scrutiny Committee determine we have not dealt with your petition adequately, it may use any of its powers to deal with the matter.

These powers include instigating an investigation, making recommendations to the Council’s Executive and arranging for the matter to be considered at a meeting of the full Council.

Once the appeal has been considered the petition organiser will be informed of the results within 5 working days. The results of the review will also be published on our website.

Appendix 2

The Petitions Duty - minimum requirements of the petitions scheme:

Anyone who lives, works, or studies in the local authority area, including under 18s can sign or organise a petition and trigger a response

Petitions must be acknowledged within the time period specified by the local authority

Among the many possible steps the Council may choose to take in response to a petition the following steps must be included with the options listed within the scheme:

  • Taking the action requested in the petition
  • Considering the petition at a meeting of the Authority
  • Holding an inquiry
  • Holding a public meeting 
  • Commissioning research
  • A written response to the petition organisers setting out the Authority's views on the request of the petition 
  • Petitions with a significant level of support trigger a debate of the full Council. Councils will determine this locally but it must be no higher than 5% of the local population.
  • Petitions with the requisite level of support, set by the local authority, trigger a senior local government officer to give evidence at a meeting of the Authority’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee.
  • Petition organisers can prompt a review of the local authority’s response if the response is felt to be inadequate.

Data Protection

The contact details provided to us will not be published and we will not contact you unless you are the Lead Petitioner or we need to clarify matters regarding the specific petition you have submitted/signed. The data will solely be used for verifying that the petition contains the required number of signatures and that those who have signed the petition live, work or study in Bassetlaw.

By starting or signing a petition, an individual gives explicit consent to the Council to process personal data as part of the Council's Petition Scheme.  

We advise that the following wording is included on each page of the petition that will contain signatures: “Bassetlaw District Council (the Council) will become the data controller when the petition  is deposited with the Council. The details you provide on this form will only be used  for the purpose of this petition. Your information may be shared with the petition  organiser, Council officers, Councillors or service providers.” 
Information provided will be retained in accordance with the Council’s retention schedule. We will take all reasonable steps to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information. Your details won't be passed on to any third party.

Petitions Received and Council Reply

St John's Field Gateford

St John's Field Gateford petition, dated 29th March 2021 - (personal information has been redacted from this document).

This petition has been scanned and therefore does not meet our accessibility requirements. You may request an accessible format. Information about scanned PDFs is detailed in our accessibility statement.

Council response to petition, dated 7 April 2021 - (personal information has been redacted from this document).

Retford Markets Proposal and Retford Market Square

Retford Markets Proposal and Retford Market Square petition, dated 2nd January 2024 - (some personal information has been redacted from this document)

This petition has been submitted as a PDF and therefore may not meet our accessibility requirements. You may request an accessible format. Information about PDFs is detailed in our accessibility statement.

Council response to petition, dated 28th February 2024 

Harworth and Bircotes PSPO Consultation

Harworth and Bircotes public space protection order consultation, dated 11 February 2025.

Retford Buttermarket Petition

Retford Buttermarket Petition, dated 12th June 2025 - (some personal information has been redacted from this document). 

This petition has been scanned and therefore does not meet our accessibility requirements. You may request an accessible format. Information about scanned PDFs is detailed in our accessibility statement.

Council response to Retford Buttermarket Petition, dated 30th June 2025 (some personal information has been redacted from this document). 

Retford Buttermarket Petition (second submission), dated 20th August 2025 

This petition has been scanned and therefore does not meet our accessibility requirements. You may request an accessible format. Information about scanned PDFs is detailed in our accessibility statement.

Council response to Retford Buttermarket Petition (second submission), dated 11th September 2025. 

E-petition Guidance

E-petitions must follow the same guidelines as paper petitions. 

To submit an e-petition through our website the petition organiser must register for an account online and must provide us with their name, postal address and email address, and must live, work or study in the District.

Once you have filled in the registration form you will be sent an email to the email address you have provided. This email will include a link which you must click in order to confirm the email address is valid. Once this step is complete, you will be registered and able to create an e-petition. 

When you create an e-petition, it may take up to 10 working days before it is published online. This is because we have to check that the content of your petition is suitable before it is made available for signature.

If we feel we cannot publish your petition for some reason, we will contact you within this time to explain why. You may wish to re-word and re-submit your petition.

You will receive status update emails and when an e-petition has closed for signature you will receive an acknowledgement within 10 working days. 

How do I sign an E-petition? 

You can see all the e-petitions currently available for signature on the Council’s website.

When you sign an e-petition you will be asked to provide your name, your address, a valid email address and confirm if you live, work or study in the District. 

When you have submitted this information you will be sent an email to the email address you have provided. This email will include a link which you must click on in order to confirm the email address is valid. Once this step is complete, your ‘signature’ will be added to the petition. 

People visiting the e-petition will be able to see your name in the list of those who have signed it, however your contact details will not be visible.

Last Updated on Thursday, April 16, 2026