| Councillor Wallis admits to not being Inclusive ---
07 Feb 2010
Following on from my earlier blog article “protocol for member/officer relations, Labour Councillor Nick Wallis who happens to be the Portfolio Holder for Sustainable Environment and Climate Change has admitted that he arranged a meeting about a major ward issue and choose not to invite us.
The reason he gives for this is “At no point did you or Mike bother to contact me, and I was unaware that you had any interest in the matter”
Now show me a ward councillor who is not interested in ward matters and I will show a very bad ward councillor. Even if we had not been aware of the matter (which we were) it would have been the honest and decent thing to do to invite us, would it not?
It may be worth pointing out, it is only Councillor Wallis who fails his duty as Cabinet member by making council matters in political gains. His colleagues in the cabinet have always to the best of my knowledge been inclusive of us when it comes to ward matters.
We have also sought advice from Labour colleagues in the course of acting in the best interests of the people we represent. We have always received helpful responses.
Relating to this matter we made contact with Officers at the council as is the normal practice within any local authority in the land. Councillors and officers directly give and receive information about local issues or problems.
However, it seems that Councillor Wallis is suggesting differently. We are told had we raised the issue with him, the Portfolio Holder instead of the officers we would have had the opportunity to be kept informed of events happening within our ward.
He has changed the goalposts.
Therefore, we are now saying that ward members have to report issues directly to the Portfolio Holder in order to ensure their future involvement with issues –
Therefore, this “new” method of reporting needs to be –
1. Discussed by all members of the council especially Portfolio Holders who are going to see their workload increase dramatically
2. If agreed added to, the new method of reporting added to the constitution.
3. All members and officers made aware of the new procedure.
I wonder how much Nicks colleagues would thank him for having to deal with all ward matters when simple issues are normally dealt with by Officers!
The best bit is Nick says “What irritates me particularly is that you have never pointed out that I did try to act fairly in this matter by instructing officers after the meeting to copy you and Mike into the minutes and agreed actions, although in strict terms there was no requirement for me to take that step”
So, Mike and I should be happy with receiving second hand information after the meeting took place. As my mum would say “dropping off a rich mans table”.
We are entitled to first hand information as the constitution describes. In the best interests of the people we represent we are not prepared to accept anything less. That very quote sums up Councillor Wallis attitude and perhaps when he re-reads it he may realise how incriminating his blog response really is.
I can quote an example of how the system should work with the plans for the 20mph on Longfield Road, where all members of 2 wards from all 3 parties were consulted. The Cabinet member David Lyonette knows how to be inclusive and I wish he would share some good practice with Nick.
Councillor Wallis should act with professionalism in his role as Cabinet Member and act in a way that the people of Darlington would approve of and I know that they would not approve of the manner in which he acted relating to this incident. It was a pure act of abuse of his cabinet position in order to make a political gain for a fellow Labour colleague
____________________________________________________________
|
Comments (0) |
 RSS |
|
