With the new computer software now in place it is possible to read the background papers to an agenda prior to council meetings. Accordingly, I browsed through them for the Corporate Scrutiny meeting on June 10 and discovered an item of interest. The council has a surplus for the year of £269,000 on which they are to be congratulated. However, no praise should be offered for the way in which they intend to spend it: the bulk of the money, £200,000, is to be used to set up an ill-health retirement provision for staff. 

Because questions are now allowed at Scrutiny meetings, provided they are submitted in writing two days before the meeting takes place, I asked the following:

As this is taxpayers' money would it not be more acceptable to the public to use this for the benefit of them, for example by applying a proportion of it to the provision of the car park on the old Little Chef site in Redbrook which the residents have been promised for the past nine years?

There are many other worthy local causes to which the money could be applied, but I mentioned the car park in Redbrook because it is a project I have known about for many years.

The verbal answer, from Cllr Brian Robinson, portfolio-holder for Efficient Government and now also a county councillor, was that the fund is a mandatory requirement, so it would be very instructive to be informed where the money would have come from if there had been no surplus on which to draw.

As a supplementary question I asked when, and at which committee, this had been debated and was advised that it had been a decision of Cabinet but had been discussed under exempt minutes, meaning the public is excluded. As the result is now in the public domain it is reasonable to expect that these exempt minutes will now be also be placed there, but I shall not hold my breath. Why a matter such as this, which discusses the use of publicly-funded money, should be exempt is in any case questionable.

We are constantly being told that government, at all levels, is transparent when it is so obviously not. The Forest of Dean District Council could give a lead in this by banning all exempt minutes except where sensitive commercial details are involved. – Dr Daphne Pearson, Redbrook.