Cumbria County Council meeting today
The County Council met today in Kendal.
The page on the county council website with the agenda papers, and where the draft minutes will appear when they are written, can be found at
http://councilportal.cumbria.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=123&MId=9295.
Probably the two most important items on the agenda were
Item 8) to vote on the outcome of a review of the constitution, which produced a set of proposed changes to the council's contract procedure rules designed to make them more robust and transparent and reduce the risk of any future shambolic fiascos like the one which led to the recent Amey court case, and
Item 9) a proposal to amend the council's "Minimum Revenue Provision" policy to adopt a more prudent and stable approach to the accounting treatment, and particularly the time profile, of repayment of the authority's debts.
I don't want to trivialise the rest of the agenda or suggest that none of it was significant. A number of very important issues were raised in questions and discussions on other parts of the agenda: for example, I asked a question on the council's response to a current government consultation about billions of pounds they propose to spend on improving Britain's major road network and how we can make sure some of that money comes to Cumbria and is spent on roads like the A595.
What distinguished items 8) and 9) from the rest of the agenda is that these were the two items on which the council was actually taking material decisions relating to the authority's own responsibilities which required the approval of the full council.
* The former was an attempt to tighten up an area where the council recently lost £20 million of taxpayers' money in a legal action.
* The change to the historic and planned profile of debt provision was designed to ensure that the council's historic debts will be paid off in 50 years rather than 400 years but changes the amount of money available for the council to spend at any given council tax level this year and over the next three financial years by a total of £36.8 million pounds - which happens to correspond to the terms of office of the present set of elected county councillors.
C Northcote Parkinson (creator of "Parkinson's Law") once suggested that the time which a meeting would spend on items on the agenda would be in inverse proportion to the financial significance of any decisions being taken.
It is horrifying how often Northcote Parkinson's cynical and humorous observations about the operation of government and business organisations are dead right and he had CCC bang to rights today. The meeting lasted about two and a half hours including an adjournment to sort out a totally unnecessary row about the fact that one of my colleagues wanted to record the meeting, but of that less than ten minutes was spent on the two most important items (far less than on "Camera-gate.")
Under item 8) I asked if the council was satisfied that the proposed changes do everything that can reasonably be done to strengthen governance and transparency in the contract process and minimise the risk of any future Amey-type failures, and whether how they work will be monitored to make sure these changes will be effective. The response to my question was, in my humble opinion, an Olympic-Gold-medal-standard demonstration of how to subtly evade responsibility and pass the buck elsewhere, though it also roughly translated as "Yes." The proposal then sailed through without further debate.
There was slightly more debate on item 9) with two or three of my colleagues asking questions designed to establish that the proposals were reasonably prudent and not just an accounting trick to allow the present administration to spend an extra £36.8 million pounds over the period between now and the next county council election, at the expense of future generations of council tax payers over the following fifty years. Then these proposals sailed through too.
I think it would be a healthy thing if more members of the public were to take an interest in how councils such as Cumbria County Council spend vast amounts of money on their behalf and hold councillors to account, preferably in a constructive way.
NB - anonymous personal attacks on social media are not an effective or constructive way of holding councillors to account and although I would welcome any reasonable feedback on this post, I will delete anything which is offensive, potentially actionable or abusive, and I am not going to get into any long debates about the changes to "Minimum Revenue Provision" unless it is evident that the person making the comment has made some effort to inform themselves about what was actually proposed, which you can do by following the link above and clicking on the "agenda reports pack" icon or those for the specific reports on the MRP.
Although I would probably accept "This report made my brain hurt." from someone who is not an economist, accountant or an experienced councillor as evidence that they had tried to read it !!!
And the reason I don't think the "Camera-gate" row about one of my colleagues trying to record the meeting should have been necessary in the first place because I believe that as a matter of routine all important meetings of County, Borough, District or Unitary councils should be recorded by the council itself and placed online so that residents of the authority area who for reasons of employment, their personal circumstances or any other reason cannot attend and watch in person can look it up online and see what their elected representatives are doing on their behalf.
The page on the county council website with the agenda papers, and where the draft minutes will appear when they are written, can be found at
http://councilportal.cumbria.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=123&MId=9295.
Probably the two most important items on the agenda were
Item 8) to vote on the outcome of a review of the constitution, which produced a set of proposed changes to the council's contract procedure rules designed to make them more robust and transparent and reduce the risk of any future shambolic fiascos like the one which led to the recent Amey court case, and
Item 9) a proposal to amend the council's "Minimum Revenue Provision" policy to adopt a more prudent and stable approach to the accounting treatment, and particularly the time profile, of repayment of the authority's debts.
I don't want to trivialise the rest of the agenda or suggest that none of it was significant. A number of very important issues were raised in questions and discussions on other parts of the agenda: for example, I asked a question on the council's response to a current government consultation about billions of pounds they propose to spend on improving Britain's major road network and how we can make sure some of that money comes to Cumbria and is spent on roads like the A595.
What distinguished items 8) and 9) from the rest of the agenda is that these were the two items on which the council was actually taking material decisions relating to the authority's own responsibilities which required the approval of the full council.
* The former was an attempt to tighten up an area where the council recently lost £20 million of taxpayers' money in a legal action.
* The change to the historic and planned profile of debt provision was designed to ensure that the council's historic debts will be paid off in 50 years rather than 400 years but changes the amount of money available for the council to spend at any given council tax level this year and over the next three financial years by a total of £36.8 million pounds - which happens to correspond to the terms of office of the present set of elected county councillors.
C Northcote Parkinson (creator of "Parkinson's Law") once suggested that the time which a meeting would spend on items on the agenda would be in inverse proportion to the financial significance of any decisions being taken.
It is horrifying how often Northcote Parkinson's cynical and humorous observations about the operation of government and business organisations are dead right and he had CCC bang to rights today. The meeting lasted about two and a half hours including an adjournment to sort out a totally unnecessary row about the fact that one of my colleagues wanted to record the meeting, but of that less than ten minutes was spent on the two most important items (far less than on "Camera-gate.")
Under item 8) I asked if the council was satisfied that the proposed changes do everything that can reasonably be done to strengthen governance and transparency in the contract process and minimise the risk of any future Amey-type failures, and whether how they work will be monitored to make sure these changes will be effective. The response to my question was, in my humble opinion, an Olympic-Gold-medal-standard demonstration of how to subtly evade responsibility and pass the buck elsewhere, though it also roughly translated as "Yes." The proposal then sailed through without further debate.
There was slightly more debate on item 9) with two or three of my colleagues asking questions designed to establish that the proposals were reasonably prudent and not just an accounting trick to allow the present administration to spend an extra £36.8 million pounds over the period between now and the next county council election, at the expense of future generations of council tax payers over the following fifty years. Then these proposals sailed through too.
I think it would be a healthy thing if more members of the public were to take an interest in how councils such as Cumbria County Council spend vast amounts of money on their behalf and hold councillors to account, preferably in a constructive way.
NB - anonymous personal attacks on social media are not an effective or constructive way of holding councillors to account and although I would welcome any reasonable feedback on this post, I will delete anything which is offensive, potentially actionable or abusive, and I am not going to get into any long debates about the changes to "Minimum Revenue Provision" unless it is evident that the person making the comment has made some effort to inform themselves about what was actually proposed, which you can do by following the link above and clicking on the "agenda reports pack" icon or those for the specific reports on the MRP.
Although I would probably accept "This report made my brain hurt." from someone who is not an economist, accountant or an experienced councillor as evidence that they had tried to read it !!!
And the reason I don't think the "Camera-gate" row about one of my colleagues trying to record the meeting should have been necessary in the first place because I believe that as a matter of routine all important meetings of County, Borough, District or Unitary councils should be recorded by the council itself and placed online so that residents of the authority area who for reasons of employment, their personal circumstances or any other reason cannot attend and watch in person can look it up online and see what their elected representatives are doing on their behalf.
Comments