| AdminHistory | The General Purposes Committee had no separate executive department and is therefore administered through the Town Clerk's Department, for which whose staff, as well as the Lord Mayor’s, the committee is responsible. This fact also made the General Purposes Committee the largest and most representative committee of the Council, as it originally consisted of the Lord Mayor, the ex-Lord Mayor, the chairman of the Drainage Board, one member from each of the other standing committees of the Council and two members nominated by the Labour Group of the Council. Furthermore, the General Purposes Committee often sends representatives to the meetings of other standing committees and sub-committees. The committee made a monthly report to the Council.
The functions of the General Purposes Committee were wide-ranging, especially after the Improvement Act of 1851, when the Committee was reconstituted. Indeed, it was so wide-reaching that the relationship between the General Purpose Committee and the Council Committee is usually adopted by the standing committees, which often appoint their own General Purposes Sub-Committees, along with a Finance Sub-Committee (sometimes combining the two into one sub-committee), to perform the same function, but at a more parochial level. According to its mandate, as set down by the Council in 1851, the purpose of the General Purposes Committee is simply to 'attend to all business and matters referred to it by the Council, and also all business of a general character not entrusted to any other committees, and to suggest to the Council from time to time any new business, which, in its opinion, is important to the public interest.' With such public interest, the committee immediately took over the role of licensing and registering Hackney carriages, slaughterhouses and lodging houses, and appointed a Surveyor of Public Buildings and Inspector of Nuisances.
Many of the issues examined by the General Purposes Committee were later passed on to existing standing committees as a part of their remit, or new standing committees were established by order of the General Purposes Committee to deal with them. Indeed, the first significant matter dealt with and recorded by the original committee in 1845 was regarding weights and measures, which after 1851 fell under the jurisdiction of the Markets and Fairs Committee (BCC/1/AN). Other matters examined, which led to the establishment of standing committees, included parks, libraries, gas, electricity and burial grounds. The committee also recommended to the Council where committees could be amalgamated, as happened with the Finance Committee and the Rates and Appeals Committee in 1858. The committee also formed its own sub-committees for such general purposes as the General Grant Sub-Committee in 1877, to receive and host a visit by General Ulysses S. Grant, formerly President of the United States of America and Civil War hero.
Another early function of the committee was the purchase of stores and in 1922, the Stores Purchasing Advisory Committee also called the Officials’ Advisory Committee was formed from a sub-committee of the General Purposes Committee. Conversely, the same is also true. The Council established a Parliamentary Committee in 1842 (BCC/1/AB), which acted as a liaison between the Council and Parliament regarding proposed legislation. This committee was disbanded in 1845, with its function becoming a part of the remit of the General Purpose Committee, which at times delegated it further to a sub-committee. The General Purpose Committee also acted as a liaison between the Corporation and private companies, as well as with other Corporations or local authorities, to improve the working of the Corporation. |