Controversial plans to reduce the role of neighbourhood committees in decision-making have been approved by Kingston Council, amid claims that they were “undemocratic” and “arrogant.”

The sweeping changes to Kingston’s democratic process, drawn up by council leader Kevin Davis, were passed at last night’s full council meeting at Guildhall.

Coun Davis argued that the authority, in its current form, was “not good enough” when he spoke to support the Conservatives' 'Renewing Kingston’s Democracy' motion during the four-hour meeting.

The motion laid out plans to reduce the number of neighbourhood committee meetings and called for a minimum of 10 objections before a planning application of under 10 units can be publicly discussed.

Coun Davis said: “The level of engagement at full council at the moment just isn’t good enough.

“It has been quite common to have constitutional changes without public consultation; in fact it has been the norm at this council to do so.”

“There are very dense issues that will not engage most residents.

“Most of our 165,000 residents will not engage with this paper on any level. This has been discussed since the last election.

“We visited neighbourhoods and some of them do good things and some of them are not so good.”

A new system of public forums and other meetings would give residents roughly double the number of opportunities to quiz councillors on decision making, Coun Davis claimed.

He added: “We have to get the whole council used again to the idea of taking decisions.

“Turning around anything within a local authority is not something that happens overnight. What we're doing is a work in progress.”

Former Conservative councillor Lynne Finnerty suggested the plans should be deferred so that people could be more widely consulted.

She said: “Residents have not been given the opportunity to give their views on these very important constitutional changes.

“If the council intends to listen and engage better with residents then these proposals are an excellent starting point.

“But we request that these fundamental points at the very least be deferred to neighbourhood or strategic committees.

“The public voice must be allowed to permeate the council ear.”

Liberal Democrat opposition leader Liz Green also said the proposal should be deferred and suggested an amendment to the motion that was seconded by Labour leader Coun Linsey Cottington.

It read in part: "Entitled 'Putting the Resident into Power', ironically none of the proposals have been subjected to any public consultation.

"The report is in places arrogant, undemocratic and has been written with political bias."

She argued that the number of people who had turned up at the start of the meeting showed residents did want to engage and added: “It is a shame this is coming up at 10.30pm when most people have gone home.”

She said: “What this amendment seeks to do is to delay these plans to improve them so the whole council, along with residents, can communicate to have the best structures possible.

“To have what you are after, Kevin, engagement with residents.”

The amendment was voted down by the Conservatives and the original motion passed with 23 votes for, zero against and 19 abstentions.