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Guest blog by Philip Grant
The article below was submitted as a comment on the blog about the
possible delay in filling the Stronger Communities Lead Member role on Brent’s
Cabinet LINK t
I am repeating it here, for comment and
discussion, as part of Local Democracy Week.
In my earlier comment, I explained why I believe that Cllr. Butt is within his
rights, under Brent’s Constitution, not to appoint a new Lead Member for
Stronger Communities straight away, but to take on the responsibilities of that
role in addition to his role as Leader. This does not mean that I believe it is
the right (i.e. correct) thing for him to do. Overall, I believe that Cllr.
Butt has too much power, and some of it is a result of an abuse of Brent
Council’s Constitution.
That Constitution (in its own words) ‘…sets out how the Council
operates, how decisions are made and the procedures which are followed to
ensure that decision making is efficient, transparent and accountable to local
people. Some of the procedures are required by law, while others are a matter for
the Council. The Constitution is divided into 8 Parts. …. In particular, Parts
3 and 4 set out the rules governing the conduct of the Council’s business and
which part of the Council is responsible for various functions.’
“Responsibility for Functions” is an important area, which should mean
that there are “checks and balances” to ensure that power is shared across the
Council, so that no single person or group within it has too much (to guard
against that power being abused). The Constitution gives the Leader, or the
Leader together with the Cabinet, considerable powers, but there are also ‘functions
which cannot be exercised by the Cabinet’, ‘functions not to be the sole
responsibility of the Cabinet’ and ‘functions that may only be exercised by
Full Council’.
One area of particular concern is the General Purposes Committee, which
‘carries out a number of
functions on which the Cabinet cannot take decisions, including public rights of way, setting
the Council Tax base and approving staffing matters’. The
committee has eight members, and the Constitution used to say that at least one
of these must be a member of the Executive (the previous title for the
Cabinet). That proviso, which gave a very strong hint that most of the
committee should be made up of back-bench councillors, has been removed, and
for the past few years seven of the eight members have been Cabinet members,
with the official Opposition Leader as the eighth.
Cllr.
Butt is Chair of the General Purposes Committee, and of its Senior Staff Appointments
Sub-Committee. This has given him considerable influence over the Council’s
senior staffing structure, who is appointed to the Senior Officer posts, and
the terms on which they are appointed. There are suspicions that, during the
time that Christine Gilbert was interim Chief Executive and Cara Davani was HR
Director, the Leader of the Council may have been complicit in some of their
alleged misconduct over staffing matters.
The
appointment of the Council’s Head of Paid Service (Chief Executive) is one of
the functions which can only be exercised by Full Council, and not by the
Cabinet or the Leader. Despite this, Cllr. Butt was able to appoint Christine
Gilbert in September 2012 as ‘interim Chief Executive’, supposedly for a few
months while the Council advertised for and appointed a permanent Chief
Executive. In June 2013, Full Council was asked to extend Christine Gilbert’s
role as interim Chief Executive – it agreed to do so, but only for a FIXED TERM
which should have ended in June 2014.
The
permanent post was still not advertised, and at the meeting in September 2014, Cllr.
Butt extended Christine Gilbert’s tenure (eventually until September 2015) without
seeking the consent of Full Council. The minutes recorded:
‘The
Leader referred to the decision taken in June 2013 regarding the appointment of
a new Chief Executive. He
stated that the external auditors were reporting back on how the Council was
operating and whilst there was progress being made, stability within the
Council would enable further progress to be made. The current arrangements would
therefore remain in place until a recruitment process began in the new year
which would tie in with the launch of the new Borough Plan.’
Does Cllr. Butt have too much power? I
would suggest that he does, and that the Council’s Constitutional Working
Group, chaired by its properly appointed Chief Executive, Carolyn Downs, should
consider ways to ensure that the functions of the General Purposes Committee
and its sub-committees are carried out independently of the Council Leader and
the Cabinet.
Philip Grant.
