Many council(lors) operating under the Cabinet system (where a handful of councillors – 9 at EDDC – all appointed by the Leader) make all the decisions are now battling to change to the Committee system.
So strong is this movement – mostly started by councillors of sll parties, including the majority party tired of being simply “rubber stampers” of policies they have no involvement in – that the Local Government Association has produced a report on how to change things.
It is called “Rethinking Governance” and is introduced as follows:
“The importance of good governance
The difficult funding situation for local government means that councils are increasingly having to make decisions that will have profound, far-reaching implications both for the way that they and their partners deliver services, and on the lives of local people. These changes will involve a permanent shift in people’s expectations of what local government does, and does not, do. They will also involve a shift in the way that councils work with others in their areas. Whether this is by an expansion in commissioning, pooling and aligning of budgets with partners, decommissioning of services, major transformation or all of these, local people need the confidence to know that decisions made in their name are high-quality, evidence based and considered openly and accountably.
This is why, now more than ever, good governance is vital. Councils have a responsibility to ensure that decision-making is as effective as it can be: decision making should critically benefit from the perspective of all councillors, but also be accountable, and involve the public.
Many councils are making informal changes to their governance arrangements including tightening up existing processes, making sure that avenues exist for all members to get involved in the policy development process (for example, through overview and scrutiny) and putting in place consultation arrangements for particularly contentious decisions. Some councils have decided to go a step further, and revisit their formal governance arrangements, looking at the different decision-making models available to them and taking steps to make a legal change to a different governance system.”
There is absolutely no chance of change in the life of the current council as the Cabinet has a stranglehold on power, operating hand in glove with officers, and current majority party councillors seem to have lost all their fighting spirit, simply nodding through even the most controversial (and expensive) decisions. Even when they know it is against the wishes of those who voted for them.
But if, in May 2015, a raft of Independent and minority party councillors get elected, it could be another story.
East Devon Watch 