With Labour's Leader noting Bad Behaviour from the Administration continuing!
With things going from bad to worse at Northumberland County Council with it still sitting under a cloud, not achieving 'Best Value' for the last six years, dogged by the loss of Britishvolt, still under investigation from a Local Government peer group, their company Advance Northumberland making buyers wait more than a year to gain access to newly built homes and with the administration keeping the public at bay through using Kremlin secrecy methodology in its day to day workings.
We are pleased the Leader of the Labour Group Councillor Scott Dickinson has noted on public social media this week that toxic bullying and bad behaviour is still ongoing from the Councils administration ensuring that scrutiny panels are screwed down just as tightly as the Tories Cabinet keeping the Councils secrets kept away from the public at large.
Scrutiny in local government terms is a process whereby councillors who are not the Council's Cabinet can play an influential role in the shaping of policy and decisions that will have a real benefit on behalf of the community they represent.
Scrutiny was established in English and Welsh local authorities by the Local Government Act 2000. They were intended as a counterweight to the new executive structures created by that Act, Northumberland's executive structure is currently one of Leader and Cabinet all belonging to one party.
This is a huge change from Labour's executive structure and open Policy Board system 2013- 2017 where all political parties enjoyed membership of the policy board and all non- personal or protected data information was shared openly with every political group, every member of a scrutiny panel and the public at large.
To ensure that scrutiny has some value in Local Government the panels members are fully furnished with both the results of ongoing local performance information regarding their authority along with both regional and national comparison information in order that scrutiny members of Council, ( not its executive) set targets that can be both measured reliably and met by their teams to push the executive into ensuring they are properly responsible for the departments they are highly paid to manage as Councillors, making scrutiny a true bottom up process to galvanise the public into the recognition that their local Council can add value for receipt of their vote.
This gives the public and the Council's external auditors who are appointed by Government, assurance that 'Best Value' when spending of in Northumberland's case over £ 1Bn per year of public money is achieved.
Since 2017 the Tory led County Council has neither issued information that can drive best value that is readily useful to scrutiny members or ever achieved it on behalf of Northumberland's residents. Using press spin to plaster over the gaps, repressing the need to know and dressing everything in 'Dodo Feathers'. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/scrote *
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