| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Front page article re. area planning committees | |
| Posted by: | Phil Andrews | |
| Date/Time: | 06/06/11 12:55:00 |
| I am grateful to Councillor Hearn for his comments. Like he says, I did make some suggestions of my own in respect of Area Committees during the previous admininstration and indeed one or two of them have actually been incorporated into the Report passed by Borough Council. So clearly I do not reject it in its entirety. The challenge that my own proposals sought to address was to increase the powers of Area Committees whilst not making them more time-consuming or expensive. I felt this to be an objective that might further ICG aspirations whilst at the same time satisfying any Conservative concerns about cost. My proposal was to restore the power to determine minor applications, primarily those that had been brought to Area Committee solely because a neighbour had objected, to officers, thus freeing up valuable member time. As a protection such applications would be brought to the attention of elected members, who could call them in to Area Committee if they so wished. So in this respect at least the proposals contained in the Report were actually very close to my own. I further pointed out that many of the items brought to Monitoring meetings were unlikely to be of interest to the wider public, and that such items should be brought to one "united" Area Committee meeting, held at the Civic Centre, rather than rolled out on five separate occasions to five different ACs, on five different nights, incurring five separate amounts of officer time. Such a meeting would still be held in public for the benefit of anybody who did wish to attend and take part. However rather than being a cost-saving exercise my proposal did call for a quid pro quo, and that was that the time freed up by the implementation of my proposals should be channelled back into the local democratic process by increasing the strategic powers of Area Committees and where possible by devolving them still further, possibly to ward level. Certain decisions could possibly taken by ward members, maybe even with their own small budgets, without the need for officer support at the point of discussion. The major difference between my own suggestions and those that have been approved by Borough Council is that mine were intended to devolve powers closer to the grass roots at no extra cost to the taxpayer, whereas those passed by Borough Council are officer-led proposals which seem to have been inspired by a desire to save money at a cost to local democracy. It is a shame therefore that they would seem to have been pushed through with nary a whimper of protest, and I dare say they will not be the last encroachment upon the authority of locally elected representatives that we will see during the course of the next few years. |