Since my post about Cllr George Crane stepping down as lead member for environment and speculation about his replacement LINK, I have heard that the post may be incorporated into an existing cabinet role.It will be argued that this reflects the reduction in environment responsibilities with most of the Council function out-sourced to Veolia.
It will also conveniently avoid any competition for the role and the testing of loyalties to 'The Leader', Cllr Muhammed Butt.
One of the councillors most qualified for the position challenged the leadership over Council Tax.
Given the power of the Cabinet this will reduce decision making to just 7 people.
3 comments:
Love the Secret Seven picture!
As the Cabinet decreases in number and becomes even more of a closed shop so will the democratic process decrease even further for residents.
I agree that the Secret Seven picture was an inspired illustration for this item, Martin.
As I showed in my comment on the earlier blog about George Crane stepping down, Cllr. Butt (or whoever is Leader of the Council after the annual meeting on 20 May) has a choice of how many members there should be in Brent's Cabinet:
'The Leader chooses between 2 and 9 other councillors to form the Cabinet.'
The Leader could bring in more of his fellow councillors, to give a wider range of views and experience in arriving at collective decisions, or he could (within the terms of Brent's Constitution) reduce the number further. For the sake of local democracy, I hope that the latter option does not happen, or we could be looking at "The Infamous Five" or (heaven forbid!) "The Three Unwise Men".
When Brent has 63 elected councillors, representing the people of 21 wards across the borough, to give most of the decision making power to so few of them seems to me to be a mistake.
Philip Grant.
By "most qualified" for the post and a challenger over Council Tax, I assume you mean John Duffy? He'd probably get about two votes.
Post a Comment