The Cat's Out of The Bag (Barnet Borough Liberal Democrats)

Barnet Borough Liberal Democrats <info@barnetlibdems.org.uk>

The Cat's Out of The Bag

November 21, 2009 9:55 PM
By Cllr Jack Cohen in Hendon Times

Whilst all the attention was on the marathon Brent Cross planning meeting this week, it was events at the Business Management Overview and Scrutiny Committee that could have a much more profound impact.

The Business Management Overview and Scrutiny Committee sounds uninspiring, boring and will not be any one's idea of a good night out. Often the local press don't bother to turn up. This is the Committee that scrutinises decisions taken by Cabinet. New rules make it more difficult for us opposition Councillors to raise issues. We also have to put ourselves through hoops to get items on the agenda.

We have first to give reasons why we want to scrutinise individual items discussed at Cabinet and second to submit questions in advance. This I am told is so that the Cabinet Member has time to provide proper answers.

The Cabinet item that interested me was about the Future Shape Proposals. I emailed my request for it to be called in on the 29th October at the same time asking a series of questions. Depending on the answers you are permitted to ask supplementary questions. So obviously the sooner you receive a reply the more time you have to prepare.

But this is Barnet Council remember. The Business Management Overview and Scrutiny Committee met last Monday the 16th November at 6pm. So when did the Council send the reply, yep 4.30pm on the 16th. The Leader of the Labour Group suffered the same fate; except she was told that many of her questions had been ruled out of order, but by whom I wondered to myself.

Well a minor row broke out over this at the meeting. The Conservative Members of the Business Management Overview and Scrutiny Committee (who rarely ask any questions) sat and stared. The Conservative Chairman did not seem to care much either. But the Leader of the Council who was there to answer questions (accompanied by the Chief Executive) came across as tetchy and was clearly trying to give the impression it "was nothing to do with me Guv".

Now if you have stayed with me this far you may be thinking does any of this matter? Oh yes it does. It is about whether the Council really does believe in proper scrutiny of its decisions or whether, as some of us believe, they want to push things through in the hope no one notices.

And what better example of a proposal they would rather not debate than the Future Shape Programme, or as it has been referred to as the Easy Jet or Budget Airline Model. This is what we were asking questions about. The Leader now denies it is the Easy Jet Model. The Leader backtracked he was only holding the Budget airlines as a Model worth looking at. So what does future shape mean? Well we know it is going to cost over 2million pounds to set up. The savings will be any thing up to 14 million after seven years. But tell us how, tell us more about it what services will have to go, what are the core services that will not be touched?

We were led up hill and down dale as the Leader tried to answer these important questions. When pressed to give at least one example of how it would work he told us residents in Hadley may have different needs than residents in West Hendon. Consultants, any number of working parties, and two million pounds! I could have told him that for the cost of a bar of Cadburys milk chocolate.

And then finally it came out, the bombshell. We were told "Refuse Collection may not be a core service". There it is, this is what it is all about. No amount of back tracking can conceal the agenda. The cat is out of the bag. And this time the Press was there to put it on record.

I'll catch up on Brent Cross in my next blog.