The Western Morning News has given prominence to this letter,dated 7th October, from EDA member, Tim Todd.
‘Dear Sir,
May I comment on your lead article on Sunday Oct 5th.
The ‘arrogant’ leadership problem was known about back in 2000 when the Joseph Rowntree Foundation presented a report entitled ‘Hung Authorities, elected mayors and cabinet government’. Whilst perceiving the problem as a country wide one, one paragraph from the report struck me as expressing precisely all that is wrong in this regard with my own East Devon District Council . If I may quote :
“The current incidence of one-party dominated councils is understandably causing concern. A survey of such authorities carried out by one of the authors of this report (Leach, 1998) revealed some characteristics which do not augur well for the Government’s democratic renewal agenda. Despite the lack of a significant opposition, it was rare for group discipline to be relaxed in a way that enabled majority party members to play an effective scrutiny role. Council and committee meetings were often brief rubber-stamping exercises, with the dominant group preferring to debate contentious issues in private, rather than in public. The expression of the local representative role was also largely confined to group meetings (see also Copus, 1999). There must be a real possibility that, if such behaviours perpetuated under a cabinet system, there will be even less public debate or scrutiny of key decisions than at present in some of these authorities – in which, moreover, there is often a dearth of effective electoral competition and associated low election turn-outs.”
Between its cabinet and senior officers, East Devon District Council has demonstrated time and time again that it is unwilling to ‘take advice’ from the DCLG , or anyone else, on any aspect of democracy or accountability so we can only look for change via the ballot box and or changes in the law such as that which forced local councils into accepting the public’s right to record meetings, (a right EDDC , until forced to accept, had delayed voluntarily implementing in full).’
Yours sincerely
Tim Todd
East Devon Watch 
As posted as a comment to a previous blog entry, Eric Pickles the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government said in a recent letter in answer to a question I asked:
“Local authorities are independent bodies and accountable to their electorate rather than Ministers, and it is right that councils are properly held to account by their electorate. To help the public hold their councils to account we have, for instance, changed the rules on openness and transparency of council decision making, most recently putting in place new rules to allow the public to report on council meetings. I consider this approach [i.e. localism], rather than centralist, top-down control, is the right one and allows an informed public to hold their council to account when exercising the ultimate sanction at the ballot box.
That is why it is important that when there is an election, the public take the opportunity to exercise their right to vote.”
So, there you have it!!! Stated in plain english, pretty much as bluntly as it can be phrased, by a senior Government Minister, a Secretary of State no less! If you don’t like secrecy, alleged corruption, lack of consultation, lack of accountability etc., then the only solution available is to use YOUR vote at the next local council elections (in May 2015) to vote in a different set of councillors.
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