Skip to content or view screen version

Who Is Running Northampton Borough Council?

Andy Hoare | 05.02.2002 22:36

This article highlights the battle for control of the Northampton Borough Council between councillors and officers. This is only one example of the utter chaos that this present Labour Adminstration has heaped onto the poor residents of this great, historic town.

With Only Two 'Scrutiny Call-Ins' During This Trial Year Of The Cabinet System, Webby Wonders What Is Overstretching The Officers Of The NBC So Far, That They Are Unable (Or could it possibly be unwilling?) To Do Their Jobs To Their Political Masters Satisfaction? Tourist Info Centre At the second meeting of Scrutiny Committee 2 (regarding the Tourist Information Centre (TIC)), Liberal Democrat councillors were amazed to discover that the detailed information they had requested for the meeting from borough council officers was not forthcoming. Scrutiny Committees 2 and 4 had jointly asked a number of pertinent questions and were expecting a proper report back from officers about it. What they got instead was a report that simply restated the reasons why officers were recommending a move again (reminds me of English people speaking to a foreigner, if he doesn't understand say the same thing again but shout louder), together with photocopies of bits of the old Best Value Report and, get a load of this, the original recommendation in July to investigate the option of moving the TIC! Officers had 'effectively refused to supply answers' to the questions the Liberal Democrats had asked, because they claim they don't have the resources to do it! Yeh right, what a crock of **** I'm sure that if the Executive had asked the same questions they would have to have done the research! Bear in mind that there have only been 2 'call-ins' during the period of almost a year since the new structure was put in place. The officers, busy as they are, should have by now got use to the demand of scrutiny - this is exactly why scrutiny was put in place by the government. Who on Earth (if anyone), is actually running this borough council? It certainly appears the officers are in total control and that the elected representatives of the people of Northampton are nothing more than noddies that rubber stamp the decisions made by the officers. This is certainly a situation that would never have arisen if Cllr John Dickie was still the leader of the Labour Group! Oh dear, maybe I shouldn't have said that as 'they' may turn on Cllr Dickie now thinking that he is 'feeding' Webby. Anyway, back to this meeting. Cllr McCutcheon said that under the new regime, Councillors would have to do more and more of this research themselves. Cllr Jill Hope (Lib Dem - West Hunsbury) said that in view of the fact that most of their Councillors were in full-time jobs, she presumed that in this case they would be recompensed for the lost hours at their paid jobs if they were being expected to undertake Council Officers' work themselves. Anyway, despite the fact that Lib Dem Councillors didn't get the papers until the meeting (Cllr Hope complained about that and was told that the Officers were too busy. Too busy to photocopy a few papers and send them out? Apparently the 'non-report' took hours of Officer time. No wonder their having to cut services!) they studied the extracts of Best Value and the original proposal and all agreed that the various options available as an alternative to the move of the TIC had not been properly investigated and, that it would be wrong to rush into this move without doing a proper investigation. It was 'wrongly I believe' assumed that the same number of people would visit the TIC when it moved as do now (i.e. no drop due to a poorer location) No real investigation of other options such as re-opening the link bridge or seeking a partnership with a private retailer to jointly provide the service (Mr Grant's house is a prime site and I'm sure there are retailers who would be interested in working with the Council to provide the service) A recommendation from Scrutiny 2 to the Executive was drafted. Cllr McCutcheon true to form wanted to 'water it down' but he knew he was outvoted even though it didn't go to a vote. All this goes to show how neutered local councillors have become under the Governments so called 'modernisation'. But one rather interesting thing I did notice was that Cllrs John Dickie and John Rawlings (Labour), were both present as representatives of Scrutiny 4 and, I got the impression that they were urging the Lib Dem Councillors to push for a vote from the sidelines? If this is the case it confirms everything Webby has been reporting for over a year now - that not all is how it should be in the Labour Group!! In the absence of the hard information all that Scrutiny 2 has been able to say is that the decision should be reconsidered and that a proper investigation of the alternatives should be undertaken. But as Webby reported on the 21/01/2002, Cllr Terence Wire has already said that no matter what the Scrutiny 2 Committee decided, he was going to go ahead with this move regardless. With this in mind, I think that the Executive will say that in the 'absence of any hard evidence' (thanks to the officers of the NBC) that their decision is wrong, they see no reason to change it. This has grave implications for the future of Scrutiny in Northampton. As long as the likes of Cllrs Davies, Wire, Foot, Ford, Boss & Marriott are allowed (in my opinion) to carry on acting like dictators, then democracy in Northampton is dead. Northampton Needs Independent Councillors. Webby shall be posting an article addressing this issue of Independent Councillors in the near future. I believe this is the only way forward to obtain the kind of representation that Northampton desperately needs. BACK TO LOCAL NEWS+ http://www.6bcn.freeserve.co.uk/local_news_2002.htm

Andy Hoare
- e-mail: andy@6bcn.freeserve.co.uk
- Homepage: http://www.6bcn.freeserve.co.uk/local_news_2002.htm