Friday 19 August 2016

What the Council does on a nice morning in August (18th) what a shambles

A few lowlights. There were no highlights:

1. Complaints tabled about councillors not turning up to meetings to discuss how the Council is governed. Concern expressed that the process of reviewing how the Council is governed is taking place too quickly and we need more meetings! There are too many already (in my view).  4 in August alone.

2. The Steering Group held a meeting on 14th July (its role is to steer 2 committees working on this so that they are both going in the same direction) but the Chair and Vice Chair of  the Constitution and Governance Committee did not turn up to be steered.

2. Report on how the Leader got on with his public meetings on governance of the Council (Who Decides). There were seven meetings fronted by the Leader, Deputy Leader and senior officers. . Only 240 people attended in total. These were described as the 'usual suspects- Cornwall Councillors and Town/Parish Councils with very few members of the public present' .

3. Only 3 out of 200? Parish councils attended the sessions with the GREG (the external group of experts looking at governance of the Council.

4. Only 30-35% of Parish Clerks had actually opened the recent newsletter from the Council which told them about all the sessions on governance (never mind circulated to their members).

5. Complaints tabled about central government and lack of funding for the Cornish language. Fears raised that Cornish minority status endangered. However, Cllr Dolphin (Lib Dem Chair of Committee) wants to stand down from the working group dealing with this as she is too busy. No member of the Committee would volunteer to replace her. So it is mainly the Bards who are left.

6. But I imagine that the Committee did approve the 13th version of the Terms of Reference of the Health and Well Being Committee (committee established in 2012). I had to leave before that vote.

What sort of message can we learn from this and will we?