Whenever one speaks to someone about the District Council (among the very few who appear to take an interest these days), there is an air of extreme frustration. This is true of councillors and voters alike. All are disenchanted, to say the least, with the cabinet system. This has been highlighted publicly by Councillors Roy Birch and Venk Shenoi who are supporting a return to the cross-party executive system.
Cabinet consists of six members of the ruling Conservative party, each with a 'portfolio' of council departments to oversee. Although they do not go so far as to call themselves ministers, this is apparently how they see their positions. If they accepted and reflected the concerns of the other elected members, who in turn represent us, the electors, this would be a reasonable system but they do not.
Even when a matter such as the current refurbishment of the council offices (at a cost of some £400,000) was voted down by scrutiny committee and full council alike, cabinet still continued with the decision to carry out the project in their accustomed 'we-know-best' manner. No member of the public can question the decisions of this oligarchy at cabinet meetings because they have themselves decided that no public questions will be allowed. What are they afraid of? The answer is possibly that an unwelcome spotlight of common sense could be directed on to the decisions.
The history of the adoption of the cabinet system itself is very murky. Where the population is less than 85,000 the system is not mandatory and the local population in the Forest hovers around that figure. Apparently the decision was taken in February 2007 and a public consultation then took place in May that year by postal questionnaire.
Unfortunately, many of these questionnaires were never received by the intended recipients as they bore Ross-on-Wye postcodes. How this could have happened has never been explained. The result was that there was a very small vote for the cabinet system made mostly by people who were unlikely to know the significance of the difference between the options offered and this response was taken to vindicate a decision already taken. This is not democracy.
Another apparently insoluble problem for those chairing council meetings is that of procedure. Time and again they have to be checked and corrected by Cllr Bruce Hogan (Lab.). This must be hugely embarrassing for the Conservative majority and poses the question, if he can grasp the complexities of the system why cannot they?
The council should put its house in order, have a training session on procedure and abandon the cabinet system. – Dr Daphne Pearson, Tinman's Green, Redbrook.