Something rotten at HDC

The Labour Government are the ones who went down the road of changing local government "for the better" by having a Cabinet and Scrutiny system of local government. This was rotten from the start. With many Councillors excluded from the decision making mechanism they were given the alternative role of scrutiny.

What a waste of time and effort this has been. The Car Park charging is a classic example of Cabinet ignoring Scrutiny. Because Cabinet has the power and the Scrutiny committees are poor talking shops for Councillors. Otherwise they wouldn't have much to do!

Another example is the Scrutiny of "Provision of Leisure Facilities for Young People". In essence it was an attempted grab, by a number of Councillors, for money for local projects because the Towns were getting all the facilities. As was pointed out most of these facilities were paid out of Section 106 agreement monies.

A scrutiny committee went down the secret approach passing this off to a secret working group. This secret group reported back and the report finally ended up at Cabinet. Many of the conclusions were ignored by Cabinet which decided these facilities were now to be run by the Town/Parish Councils. This Cabinet decision was totally at odds with the Scrutiny report.

There were two areas which Cabinet decided that merited further examination. These were joint insurance and joint safety inspection. In a report to OSP - Social Well-being even these two ideas have been dumped as unworkable.

In the end this Scrutiny process has been a complete waste of Councillors and Officers time and has ended up with nothing. Time this Scrutiny process was ended as it is a complete waste of time and Council Taxpayers money.