ANY suggestion that Cllr Hogan's recent question to the Forest of Dean District Council was put with the intention of restricting the right of the public to hold the council to account could not be further from the truth.

His question, which was put with the full knowledge and approval of the Labour group, sought only to highlight the vulnerability of the current standing orders to unnecessary questions being heard at full council meetings.

Any member of the public has the right to access information held by the council. Most do so by contacting the relevant council officer and there is no need to take up valuable meeting time of the full council to hear the question being put or the answer given.

The value of allowing members of the public to put their question to meetings of the full council is that it allows the public to highlight issues that require a political response (ie a decision by elected members).

What Cllr Hogan's question did highlight is that since the introduction of public question time to meetings of the full council one individual county councillor had put no fewer than twenty two questions, most if not all of which could have been easily answered by officers as the result or phone call, or referred to matters outside the control of the district council. Yet on only one occasion did the aforementioned councillor make the effort to attend the meeting to hear the answers to his questions or to ask a supplementary.

Cllr Hogan's question did highlight another anomaly: that being an elected member of the district council, his question had to be submitted ten days before the meeting so that it could be included on the agenda.

No such restriction applied to the county councillor. The result was that the county councillor was able to submit a question about Cllr Hogan's question and to receive an answer to his question before Cllr Hogan's question had even been put, highlighting a ridiculous situation!

In the event the county councillor, from Lydney, did not turn up to hear the answer to his question again questioning the motives and intent of the individual questioner.

– Di Martin, Labour group leader, Forest of Dean District Council.