The only weapon a scrutiny committee has is one of 'call in' of a Cabinet members decision, where the Cabinet member can be grilled in public about why they made a decision. The recent Shanklin Theatre call-in was a good example - though it was only the fourth one of this Council. A weapon used sparingly.
This is because call-in requires four Scrutiny Committee members to sign-up for one, which given that the committee has EIGHT Tory places out of 14 voting members makes it very hard. Naturally there has to be a bit of arm-twisting and wheeler-dealing behind the scenes, but that doesn't matter because Scrutiny is not a quasi-judicial committee like Planning or Licensing. Its how politics works.
Sadly this is not clearly understood by at least one new (leading) member of the Scrutiny Committee, who confuses lobbying for a call-in with lobbying over a planning/licensing application. They are very different matters. Without lobbying for call-in we may as well abandon any hope of effective scrutiny of this Council.
2 comments:
You hit the nail on the head with this Geoff, too few IW Councillors actually understand anything! Planning, Education, Bus subsidy, call in rules, almost anything.. What chance democracy?
The old council was just as bad. I advocate full time professionals. About 12 - 15 maybe.
Full time professionals? NO!
We need elected officials, answerable to the electorate. But first we need an educated electorate who are not p!ssed off with politics.
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