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.