Cllr John Warren (Conservative) has sent me the following regarding proposals to be put to Brent Council's AGM on Wednesday:
Item 13 of the Council AGM is
"Changes to the Constitution." So I put forward a number of
amendments for consideration by the meeting, but Council officers told me that
they could not be considered because my amendments were nothing to do with the
amendments being proposed in the report!!!
So what is " changes to the constitution," supposed to mean?
Anyway, I shall be speaking on this
item and will circulate my amendments at the AGM. My proposals are in three
categories.......
1.To delete the elaborate and impossible
procedure which currently exists if members wish to remove the Council leader.I
propose that we revert to the time - honoured tradition of a straightforward
yes or no vote on the night.
2.A radical restructuring of the
scrutiny process .....it has failed abysmally over the past year.I cannot think
of a single occasion when it has shown any teeth.I believe that each lead
member and their portfolio should be subject to separate sub- committees so
as to scrutinise in a more forensic
way.I also propose a separate sub- committee to scrutinise the Leader and
deputy.I propose increasing the number of scrutiny members to 20 so that the
heavier workload can involve more members.
3.I am also proposing a "
People's Question Time ."This should be a 15 minute slot whereby the
Cabinet can answer questions from Brent residents without notice of the
question in the same way as PMQs.
6 comments:
Doesn't 'strengthening scrutiny committee' make a nonsense of the Tory mission to 'cut red tape'?
;-)
Cllr. Warren was told that his proposed amendments to the Constitution could not be considered because they were nothing to do with the amendments being proposed in the report to Full Council (by the Chief Legal Officer).
The amendments being proposed include:
'... delegating certain powers to the Chief Executive to act in cases of urgency and delegating to the Chief Legal Officer certain powers to make changes to the constitution.'
At the moment it is a meeting of the Full Council which has the power to make changes to the constitution. It appears that the Chief Legal Officer may already be usurping the power of elected councillors, and acting as if the changes she is proposing have already been approved, by denying a member of Full Council the opportunity to put his proposals to the Full Council's annual meeting on 20 May.
As Martin's recent blog asked: where does the power lie in Brent Council? If matters are allowed to carry on the way they are going at the Civic Centre, it could make you wonder why we elect 63 councillors to represent the people of the borough. Perhaps it is that "old-fashioned" concept of democracy.
Philip Grant.
Well said, Cllr John Warren! It's about time there was more, scruitiny, transparency & accountability to local tax-paying residents. Perhaps some of our dozier councillors will wake up & endeavour to address issues of public concern with integrity.
Cllr Warren is a brave man - wont he face diciplinary action for contacting WM?
Sack the Scrote Committee!
If you mean the Scrutiny Committee, it appears that Brent's Labour Group has granted your wish by replacing all of its members on the committee - it will be interesting to see who ends up as the Vice Chair, representing the opposition.
However, we are still left with just a single Scrutiny Committee, to cover all aspects of Council policy and practice. This is too much work for one committee to be able to do effectively, and until that is changed we will not see proper scrutiny or accountability.
Philip Grant.
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