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Not before time, Boston Borough Council is to get an "Improvement Board."
A report to this morning's meeting of the borough cabinet says the idea is to assist, support and challenge the council in achieving desired improvements.
A couple of interesting points here ...
The first is the statement of the objective is implicitly a statement that the council has failed in its activities to date - despite all the waffling to the contrary.
It's also interesting to note that improvement boards are more usually associated with action by the Regional Government Office to impose improvement on failing Councils - which makes this a case of closing the stable door before the horse has bolted rather than afterwards.
The initiative behind comes from council leader Richard Austin, who asked "the IDea" - the Improvement and Development Agency for local government which supports improvement and innovation in local government - to chair the board for the council.
It's hoped the first meeting will be held before the end of the month.
For once, this sounds to be more significant than the usual talking shop, as a progress report will go to the Minister for Local Government after every meeting - which will be held on a four weekly basis.
Membership will be limited to ten places. The opposition parties will have to agree who will represent them - and IDeA prefers that the representative will ideally come from the largest opposition party.
If you visit the borough's irrepressibly out of date website, you might first believe that this will be a difficult task for the opposition, as the membership of the council lists a tie between the Tories and the BBG for largest group.
However, the website's assertion that "The political composition of the Council is: Boston Bypass Independents – 18, Conservatives – 4, Better Boston Group – 4, Independents – 3, BNP – 1, Vacancies – 2" was, of course, the situation in June, and three and a half months later, the Tories are now the clear opposition leaders.
Unfortunately, it appears that one improvement board is not enough, and it is intended that beneath the board will be a number of project groups which will have the directors, portfolio holders and opposition members on them, plus specialists for specific topics.
Board meetings will be informal and not decision making, and there is no indication as to whether they will be made public - although notes will be circulated internally.
We wait with bated breath.

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