Suspicious person that I am I have attended the last two Board meetings of the Island's Strategic Partnership (ISP), the most recent being last Wednesday. At each I was the only person not invited, though they are supposed to be public meetings. The press don't get along either.
What is it you may ask ? Well it is a gathering of the 'great and good' in the public and voluntary sector - mainly unelected- who are tasked with "developing and making real the island’s Sustainable Community Strategy, called Eco Island" (Constitution).
And how are they getting on with this task ?
Well in the hour or so I was able to stay - 10 minutes having being lost due to the usual late start - the distinct impression I got was 'not very well'. Lots of missed targets it seems (where they are actually being reported), with potential financial consequences for the Island in terms of additional government funding.
Still they are going to be under the glare of the Scrutiny Committee in the future, so that's alright then. But how would some of the unelected Board members react to real scrutiny......
7 comments:
There's another board/committee, called the Health and Wellbeing Board, which I attended until I lost the will to live. I fail to see any difference in its remit from that of the ISP. So far as I know, both the ISP and H&WB board were wished on local authorities generally by government (probably by the unelected and unaccountable GOSE, government office South East).
Far be it from me to take issue with you, Geoff, but when you ask how some of the unelected board members would react to real scrutiny, I suspect some of them welcome it. I would have done. The real scandal of all of these bodies, and this is just the tip of the iceberg, is that they are unobserved, un-scrutinized, and at worst do little more than plug the interests of their particular niche of the voluntary sector. You could be deafened by the sound of axes being ground....
If local government is going to reach out to the general public and voluntary sector, I've no problem with that - although it's only one way of doing things, to actually appoint the non-elected to boards - but I wish the process were open, and genuinely available to ordinary people, ie not paid officials unaccompanied by lay members. So far as "eco island" is concerned, it is a sound-bite posing as a policy - just adding to the outpouring of bureacracy and bureaucrat-speak that is smothering local government, housing, and health.
I was happy to do what I could to help the council on the Health & Wellbeing Board, but only insofar as I could see a) that I was doing some good, and b) that the board was capable of doing some good. Neither of these things being true, I gave up. Government and Council should both understand that setting up further tiers of pseudo public involvement is going to convince no one; and the voluntary sector needs to understand that if it lets itself be sucked in to this kind of system, it becomes as much part of the problem as it will ever be of the solution. Blurring the edges between elected representatives and the voluntary sector, or business, or politics, or religious groups, isn't working together, but conniving, however ingenuously, in failing systems camouflaging real social problems. But the government doesn't realize it; the councils go along with government, feeling they've no choice; and the voluntary sector gets what it can out of the muddle. If, in consequence, nothing works I shall be wholly unsurprised.
There is not a word here I would disagree with. hear hear - and I'm generally sympathetic to the overall aims and politics, but fear that it has lost its way
Could your scrutity committee also look at why the council is spending money asking us to express opinion on the council budget and services (e.g. removing free OAP bus travel before 9:30am) when it has already made the decision. 'nother tick in the box?
Also worth noting that in the latest slashing of budgets because the Council are financially up the creek - £90,000 was deleted from the 'Eco Island funding', the bid for the renewable energy resource centre was pulled, Big Green Picnics cancelled, £500k chopped for insulating homes and design briefs(i assume by the much lauded Design Champion Terry whats his name) rubbed out.
Smoke 'n Mirrors.
Geoff please could you find out what the Tories current spend is on pr and 'communications.' It's surely a shocking amount. In my opinion it's a fortune wasted.
Harringey are said to be blowing £2 million a year on it. Seems crazy to me when there is so much else that needs doing.
Ref: anonymous at 6:07PM. I have been wondering the same thing. Is it better for people to put individual FOI requests in or to ask Cllr Lumley to find out?
Figures can, and no doubt would, be manipulated to show what they want them to show.
Ring the iw radio news hotline thing and get them to ask? I bet most islanders would be interested in the sums.
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