An EDA member has sent his reflections on full Council:

Now that a month or more has passed since the last full Council meeting, my first and only experience of one to date, I have been reflecting on the impression I gained from sitting through the whole thing from start to finish. My thinking here was prompted by discovering that the next full council is not until October, 3 months after the previous one – and I couldn’t understand how EDDC could function without more frequent full council meetings, and that got me started thinking about the one I attended.

So, leaving aside my own question to the council at the start, and the detail of the anti-democracy motions that pulled me there, my overall impression was … well … nothing. What was the point? The point of the council meeting? Aside from the legal need to hold it, what was the purpose of pulling together the 50 odd councillors, several council officers, a few handfuls of members of the public, and a journalist or two?

After all, there was absolutely no real debate about local issues, difficult decisions about priorities or funding or were not even mentioned. My only real memories of the meeting were the pathetic non-answers to serious questions raised by EDA members, and the belly-button gazing, inwardly-looking discussion about democracy and stopping local people from engaging. Tourism? Nope. Local economy? Nah! The Local Plan? Not a sausage. Future phases of Cranbrook or forming a Cranbrook Town Council? Nada. The office relocation? Only a statement of ignorance by Cllr Diviani. Sainsbury’s pulling out of their distribution centre plans? Finger not on the pulse – not firing on all cylinders perhaps?

So, aside from the need to rubber stamp what is decided by Cabinet without any voting input from non-Cabinet members, what was the point?