Policy Formulation and Decision Making
Political priorities and spending are determined essentially through a two-stage process.
Just like in national politics, each local political party publishes a local manifesto which reflects its political ideology and its overall aims and objectives in looking after the interests of the Bradford District.
The political parties on the Council - referred to as Groups - hold regular meetings of their own members. Here they review their stance on specific issues and they also plan their overall strategy for the future. Once the members of the Group have agreed on a particular stance, this then becomes Group Policy and is made known generally. This process is called policy formulation.
Once the policies have been formulated, they need to be adopted formally so that they can be translated into action.
This is the role of the 90 members of the Council as custodians of the public purse, who have to vote and take decisions. In reality, the "strongest" party, i.e. the one with the voting majority, will push its policies through.
