Tonight's Full Council was a total shambles - badly organised, badly prepared, and badly chaired. Called as a special meeting to put to bed the Undercliff Final Report this should have been a professionally organised event by the administration, but after tonight's performance brewers have very little to fear.
The Council leadership were seemingly astounded to find there was opposition concern about the non-role of the District Auditor throughout this saga, and were particularly surprised that one LibDem had bothered to compile a list of those concerns with the intention of incorporating them into the Report's recommendations as an amendment.
It caused havoc in their ranks and the meeting had to be adjourned whilst they worked out their position - that is the Cabinet (excluding Cousins and Hunter-Henderson), the Chief Exec, and the Wragg & Co. solicitor who is seemingly still on call. They decided they were against the Liberal amendment and proceeded to vote it down by 22 votes to 6 (Knowles, Adams, Mosdell, Stephens, Gardiner and me) and 1 abstention- yes, there were about 18 (37.5%) of the Council missing tonight, mainly Tories - under-investigation and not.
The Tories then had to cobble together an amended recommendation accepting the Report for the Council, which saw another adjournment - even though much of it was just basic tidying up of their original proposal. This prompted the departure of the only journalist present, probably in disgust, which is probably just as well. This amendment went through 24 to 4 (Knowles, Adams, Gardiner and me) with 2 abstentions - and we awaited the substantive debate on the Final Report.
And waited, and waited, and waited.......for the Chairman had decided that the vote on the last amendment constituted the final decision on the Final Report, so it went through without any real analysis of its serious deficiencies. Despite mine and Deborah's protestations. You would be lynched at some trade union meetings for such ineffectual chairing.
And that was basically it apart from the latest bout of constitutional tinkering with Scrutiny, the minutes silence at the beginning in memory of the recently deceased former Tory councillor Roy Westmore, and lots of public questions about the Chapel Street/Trafalgar Road debacle - which were answered most unsatisfactorily.
1 comment:
THAT REPORT
I suppose it was to be expected, after all when you employ a consultant it is usual to tell him what you want him to say, pay your £100,000 and wait for him to say it. This report smacks of too many changes of direction with briefing continuing throughout just to clear out the remaining senior officers who wouldn't go quietly. Hence the spiralling costs. Similarly the District Auditor should be seen as a challenging friend to the Council but he requires involving early in any process.
Did no one understand how the process should work?
There were very adequate Standing Orders and Financial Regulations in place when the Tories came to power but the new culture appeared to be that until May 2005 nothing was done correctly. I suppose we have picked up some more CPA points?
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