Two Small Requests

Today was a special meeting of the County Council to debate the new constitution - not a subject that captures the public imagination - but before you glaze over - it was an important step in local democracy. The new administration at County Hall was setting out their store of new proposals for running the council over the next four years.

In opposition, we are keen to hold the Cabinet to account and to ensure the public have a chance to have their say too. So one request, was to ask that if a member of the public submits a question to a council meeting, if they are unable to attend for any reason, then someone else can ask the question in their place. The question will have been tabled, so no extra work involved, just a change of name if the person cannot be there. But no, this was too much of a problem for them and the suggestion was voted down.

Secondly, we wished to try to ensure better and effective scrutiny of the work of the council, especially as all the Chairmen and Vice Chairmen of the Scrutiny committees, are also members of the ruling group. They wished to disband the Scrutiny Co-ordinating Group, which is a forum where all members of all political parties can look at scrutiny reviews, ensure adequate resources are available and prioritise the issues. We proposed to replace this group and have a Scrutiny Management Group of all political parties which would be open to the public (the current meeting isn't) and thus the scrutiny function of the council would be seen to be more outwardly focussed and accountable. But, guess what? The proposal was voted down. We were unanimously supported in our requests by both the Labour and Green groups

I really hope this does not mean that we are going to be battling on like this for the next four years. But there is a chink of light - we are supposed to be reviewing the situation in 12 months time - so we will be carefully monitoring this to see if there really is going to be any improvements.