Minutes and meeting reports for the intermunicipal council, Bureau and committees

Council, Bureau, committees: 3 bodies, 3 documents

• Intermunicipal council

  The minutes give the date and time, the chair, the members present or represented, the secretaries, the quorum and the agenda. They set out the resolutions adopted and the reports on the basis of which they were adopted, any requests for a special form of vote, the outcome of the votes (with, for a public roll-call vote, the names of the voters and how each voted) and the substance of the discussions. The president and the session secretary or secretaries sign them once approved. Within one week, the list of resolutions examined is posted at the head office and put online on the intermunicipal body’s website, where one exists (articles L5211-1 and L2121-25 of the CGCT).

• Intermunicipal Bureau

  For a working meeting, no minutes are required, and a record of decisions and actions is enough, in the format the authority chooses. When the Bureau decides under powers delegated by the council (article L5211-10 of the CGCT), it does so through resolutions, published and sent for the legality review like the intermunicipal body’s other acts (article L5211-3), and the president reports on the Bureau’s work at each council meeting.

• Thematic committees

  Study committees prepare the files and issue opinions, with no decision-making power. Their meeting report circulates among elected members and services, and records the opinions given, the open points and what each person is preparing next.

A single decision cycle therefore produces 3 documents of a different nature, which are not written the same way.

The substance of the discussions, not a verbatim

Since 1 July 2022, article L2121-15 of the CGCT requires the minutes to present "the substance of the discussions during the session". The substance is the meaning of the contributions, in other words who spoke, on which item and in defence of which position. The text does not require a word-for-word transcript of a 3-hour session.

An item is written up in 3 steps: the rapporteur’s presentation, the main contributions summarised with the name of their author, then the vote and its outcome. A long contribution fits in 2 or 3 faithful sentences. The exchanges on a debated item, however, cannot disappear from the minutes.

A closed session is still recorded in the minutes, and those minutes are published. At the request of five members or of the president, the intermunicipal council may decide, without debate and by an absolute majority of the members present or represented, to sit in closed session (article L5211-11 of the CGCT). The write-up then keeps only the residents’ personal data that the decision requires. Before putting the minutes online, redact the protected information, in particular residents’ personal data. If the session is recorded, provide for it in the council’s rules of procedure and prefer processing that stays on your network. Do not publish the recording: it can still be disclosed on request once the minutes are approved, after redaction, and its retention period is set with your archives service, which must approve any destruction.

Organising the documents that come out of a session

A recorded session can produce several documents. Here is the organisation we recommend.

• The document sent to elected members

  Draft minutes for the council, a record of decisions for the Bureau. It contains what must be circulated, nothing more. Recapro’s "Council meeting minutes" format produces a draft, flagged as such, which the session secretary reviews and corrects before signature.

• The services’ internal note

  The points to follow up, the questions left open, the reminders to send. It never leaves the services. In the mobile app, "Record a debrief", under the meeting’s private notes, attaches your notes, dictated after the session, to the meeting, with their own meeting report. You can also regenerate the meeting report in another format: the previous version stays in the history.

• One format per body

  The council meeting minutes format serves the council, the committee report serves committees and steering committees, and each body keeps the same structure from one meeting to the next. The administrator sets the organisation’s default format. If no format in the catalogue suits a department, we build a tailored format with you.

• Actions and their owners

  When a deadline is mentioned, the committee report ends with the upcoming deadlines: item, owner, date, or "to be specified" when nobody was named. Recapro does not invent an owner and does not chase anyone on your behalf. The follow-up starts from that list.

What we hear in local authorities

These sentences come up as soon as meeting reports are discussed with intermunicipal services, and each one calls for a precise answer. They have been reworded and anonymised, and do not come from Recapro users.

• Within the same team, everyone writes their meeting reports their own way.

  A shared format per type of meeting settles this better than an instruction. In Recapro, the administrator sets the organisation’s default format, and anyone can switch to another one for a given meeting.

• In the session, one person types, another takes notes on paper, and we reread everything in the evening.

  The session recording replaces the notes. The review remains, but it covers a draft already organised by agenda item.

• We have meeting reports, but to know where things stand, we have to reopen them one by one.

  A question asked across all your meetings returns the answer with the passages that back it up.

• After every meeting, it is the follow-up that takes the time.

  When a deadline is mentioned, the committee report ends with a table of upcoming deadlines: item, owner, date. The follow-up starts from that list.

• The tools we tested recognise either the words or the speakers, rarely both.

  Recapro separates the speakers in the transcript.

• I type up the meeting report that same evening; what costs time is everything around it.

  Around it, there is the formatting, the list of actions and finding out what was decided the previous time. Recapro prepares the first two from the recording, and a question asked across your meetings finds the third.