Cllr brands community forum plan as "lip service" (From Dudley News)

Why is it that some folk in the local political scene are more interested in NATIONAL POLITICAL lines than in doing the best for the people they represent?

Mr Jones isn't saying that he "thinks" the new style forums will fail he's saying that he "hopes" they will and he's quite prepared to scare-monger to help that along - all because his party did not create them.

Cradley have such a forum and it is the model for these new forums - it's been running for nearly 20 years, with and without Council funding and is always a successful night.

Mr Jones - get on board - do what no conservative councillor has ever dared to do - turn up at the forum and DEBATE your point not snipe from the sidelines!

Cradley Tom

Yes why do local Councillors here insist on playing party politics? We want Councillors and a Council that actually address local problems (of which there are SOOOOO many!). The Area Committees are just another excuse for a small clique of local Councillors and bigwigs (who all know each other anyway) to hang out together. Every issue that comes up is just referred to some Council officer and nothing is ever heard again. I'd welcome anything that engages more people and shakes up this degenerating, sleepy old town.

Cllr Jones knows all too well about lip service. I would rather hear what local residents have to say rather than listen to Cllr Jones, thank you

Viktoria - councillors and 'bigwigs' 'hang out together' at area committees because they are formal decision-making meetings of the Council and require duly-elected councillors to make those decisions and officers to report and advise on them.

Indeed, part of the problem of area committees as they are presently constituted is that they are trying to reconcile two often mutually-exclusive functions. On one hand they commendably try to make local democracy accessible by permitting members of the public to 'have their say' on local matters, whilst on the other they remain executive bodies of the Council tasked with making decisions - including decisions to spend public money. Therefore, whilst the first function demands that sufficient time be set aside so that opinions can be fully aired, the second determines that meetings have to run to a timetable that is brisk enough to ensure that the formal business is transacted.

As such, I sympathise when members of the public often feel they are thus relegated to the role of spectators at someone elses bash.

If Dudley's controlling Labour Group are now saying that these new area fora are to be primarily 'listening' bodies then I don't have a problem with that. However, I rather suspect the they are trying to have it both ways. For example, under their proposals there will be 'no written committee reports' to consider. However, the proposals also insist that there must be an 'audit trail' of actions; so in other other words, there will be written reports. Likewise, officer attendance is to be limited to one senior officer and a minute-taker. However, excluding departmental officers with specialised knowledge will only mean that many questions raised by both councillors and members of the public will not be able to be answered there and then, meaning that - in your words - even more issues will just be referred off somewhere and never heard of again.

In addition, one of the gripes of Cradley residents has been that being part of the Halesowen Area Committee means their locality has been ignored by a body with which they feel little affinity - although I have always strived to ensure that this is not the case.

Yet now Labour are proposing to shack Cradley up with a forum that includes Amblecote, surely creating a body with no more cohesion than at present (after all, at least Cradley has always been administratively a part of Halesowen).

Perhaps, as Cradley Tom has noted, the way forward is to create fora that are truly independent of the council and to which the councillors are welcome to attend to listen and to comment if invited, with the decision-making aspects of the present area committees being undertaken elsewhere.

However, Labour have sadly concocted something that retains the worst of both worlds. To give just one example, they blithely insist that the costs of this new set-up will be met 'within existing budgetary allocations'. Yes, and with the present fifteen boroughwide area committee meetings now set to be increased to forty-five (all still with officer and councillor attendance) I guess the kindest thing that can be said is that pigs might fly!


Cllr Ray Burston,
Chairman, Halesowen Area Committee.

Thanks for your full response. It's interesting reading, but it does underline my point because most of your response is a criticism of Labour. Why should we citizens care about a battle between Labour and Conservative being played out in the theatre of Dudley Borough? Why are Councillors attached to political parties and why does it matter what their political affiliations are? Is there any evidence that political affiliation makes local Councillors more effective in their role?

I don't know whether or not the new proposed fora are going to be an improvement on the existing Area Committees. But I do know that this isn't (or shouldn't be) a POLITICAL issue; merely a practical one of how best to spend the budget to give voice to local opinion. I believe Dudley (and every other) Council suffers from too much politics and I'd like to see more politically unaffiliated candidates standing at by-elections, or preferably for political affiliation to be forbidden completely so that we could elect Councillors based on their experience and effectiveness and not on their political affiliation.