The proposed make-up of one of Cambridge City Council’s scrutiny committees has been changed following one of my tweets. Cambridge City Council’s Civic Affairs Committee is due to meet at 6pm this evening. Earlier today I tweeted a number of observations on the published agenda and papers, including:
What housing role will new Community Services Ctte @CamCitCo have that requires tenant&leasholder reps on ctte? http://t.co/fvoA9Vy8I0
— Richard Taylor (@RTaylorUK) June 2, 2014
I have received the following, timed 16:27, from Simon Pugh, the Head of Legal Services, (£70,263/year) at the City Council:
Dear Mr Taylor,
I am writing with reference to the meeting of Civic Affairs Committee this evening, and the report in respect of Item 5.
Cllr Herbert has mentioned your tweet querying the role of co-optees on the Community Services Scrutiny Committee. This reference should have been deleted when the text was amended to consolidate housing functions in one scrutiny committee.
I attach a revised version of appendices one and two to the report, showing some tracked changes, which I am tabling this evening. This corrects the text regarding co-optees.
Yours sincerely,
Simon Pugh
Head of Legal Services
Cambridge City Council
Tel: (01223) 457401
I have made the attached document available online. The published meeting papers do not, as of the time of writing, contain any acknowledgement of the error. Presumably the Head of Legal will have to ask special permission of the chair to introduce his change; or maybe if one of the councillors agrees to propose it, and another seconds it, it could be considered as an amendment.
Originally the section on the membership of the Community Services Scrutiny Committee stated:
The Community Services Scrutiny Committee shall co-opt three tenants or leaseholders to contribute to its discussions in respect of the Committee’s housing scrutiny responsibilities. The elected representatives of tenants and leaseholders on the Housing Management Board shall be invited to nominate people for co-option under this rule.
I reviewed the areas of responibility of the Executive Councillors for Community, Arts and Recreation (Cllr Richard Johnson) and the Executive Councillor for City Centre and Public Places (Cllr Carina O’Reilly) but couldn’t see any housing related responsibilities there.
I was concerned that the council would go through a process of appointment and co-option of individuals who would be sat on a committee and never find themselves with an item on which they would be eligible to comment coming before them.
This doesn’t appear to be a straightforward mistake; it looks as if someone was at some point considering leaving some Housing matters in the Community Services Scrutiny Committee’s area of responsibility and creating a new class of co-topees to sit on the committee and help councillors scrutinise them. It appears the roles of the executive councillors were then re-jigged leaving the proposal for the then redundant co-optees in place.
Openness of Highways / Transport Joint Committee
Another item I spotted was the lack of any rules on filming, tweeting, blogging etc. from the new Highways and Transport Joint Committee to be set up between Cambridge City Council and Cambridgeshire County Council.
Committee member Cllr Mike Pitt has agreed via Twitter to take that one up at the meeting:
@RTaylorUK @camcitco @CambsCC well no. Most committees don't. I'll ask at CA tonight which council rule will apply.
— Mike Pitt (@mhpitt) June 2, 2014
I have commented:
@mhpitt Excellent thank you. In the past @CamCitCo have as I understand refused to appoint to bodies that don’t run transparently. @CambsCC
— Richard Taylor (@RTaylorUK) June 2, 2014
11 responses to “Proposed Make-up of Cambridge City Council Scrutiny Committee Amended Following Tweet”
I’ve also commented on the extent of the proposed constitutional amendments:
Cllr Johnston has responded via Twitter to describe the error in the published papers for the Civic Affairs Committee as “just a typo”.
I personally think ALL executive Councillors should be elected. not appointed!
This comment appears completely disconnected from the article.
All executive councillors are elected as councillors. I think it is right that the full council decides which roles to give which councillors; they have the opportunity to become better informed about particular councillors’ interests than electors in general do. Representative democracy means we delegate decisions to councillors who take them on our behalf, on the basis that we expect them to become more informed prior to taking the decision.
My own preference would be to not have executive councillors; but to have democracy in-depth with decisions taken by committees, or full council.
The Council did elects the Excutive?? It says in the Agenda item ‘ is for the Leader to appoint his or her executive and to allocate responsibilities’ unless I’m mistaken, it says nothing about ‘ the full council decides which roles to give which Councillors’? Anyway, my point about electing the executive was to have Labour party Councillors (the winning party), elect the executive in a special meeting. That would be more democratic than having the leader make appointments.
As to your suggestion about democracy in-depth with decisions taken by committees, I’m not sure how that would work, but having full Council as the executive is an interesting idea, although I think an executive democratically responsible to the Council would be more workable. Of course ideally I think the Council should be elected on a proportional basis, with an executive proportional to the Council.
Paragraph 3.3 of the Cambridge City Council Constitution states:
Section 4.2.1 lists as one of the functions of the Full Council:
The full council will also allocate committee positions to councillors at its Annual General Meeting (considering the recommendations from today’s Civic Affairs Committee).
Justin says he’s not sure how a true committee system would work – he’s only got to look to Cambridgeshire County Council to see one in action.
Justin has requested a desire for a proportionally elected council; he has not stated how he would go about achieving this. I would not want to see the loss of a direct local connection between a ward and its councillor; I also wouldn’t want to give huge power to party political leaders to decide who comes top of party lists and so who is most likley to be elected – I think power ought lie with the electorate and not the parties. There are options we could look at; such as electing a third of councillors on a city wide basis, as one large constituency; that could provide some degree of proportionality. My own preference though would be for no party politics in local government, small wards, a third of the current size ie. about 2,000 electors, and elections every year. I think my preferred option gives the greatest connection between voters and their representative, and gives most power to the electorate.
Cllr Pitt has confirmed the joint highways/transport committee made up of Cambridgeshire County and Cambridge City Councillors will welcome those filming, tweeting and reporting proceedings as it will be subject to the county council’s welcoming rules:
I have been contacted and provided with evidence showing the council was aware of the error prior to my tweet.
The above article is still accurate, and the quoted correspondence speaks for itself.