Although the report discusses different issues, a number of our readers have written to suggest that it also highlights similarities with Boston Borough Council under the iron fist in the iron glove known as the Boston Bypass Independent party.
We're not going to get into that, but one quote from the Commission's report did stand out when we read the document.
"Good governance is about running things properly. It is the means by which a public authority shows it is taking decisions for the good of the people of the area, in a fair, equitable, and open way. It also requires standards of behaviour that support good decision making – collective and individual integrity, openness and honesty.
It is the foundation for the delivery of good quality services that meet all local people's needs. It is fundamental to showing public money is well spent. Without good governance councils will struggle to improve services when they perform poorly."
The keyword here is openness.
We have mentioned more times than we care to count the lack of openness in the proceedings of Boston Borough Council - and a good example of this will happen tonight at the full meeting of the council.
Where, a few years ago, the agenda would be brimming with items, there are just two matters up for discussion. The first is engine room stuff - to review the current arrangements to ensure that both the Joint Consultative Committee and Chief Officer Employment Panel arrangements are fit for purpose in the future, and the second is to agree the way forward regarding how economic development and physical regeneration will be delivered in the Borough, post the winding up of the Boston Area Regeneration Committee - something which has already been stitched up by the cabinet.
Once again, we have to say that the previous administration and not the BBI was responsible for using the cabinet structure to smother transparency in the council, but the BBI has since taken that particular ball and run with it.
Which brings us to some more wise words. This time they come from James Morrison, a senior lecturer in journalism at Kingston University, writing in the journalists' bible UK Press Gazette.
He reminds us that: "Not so long ago, the most humdrum council sub-committees could generate notepads full of potential stories for canny cub reporters. While town hall debates were rarely dynamite, there was a sense that, if it could be staffed, no local authority meeting should be missed – from the monthly musings of a sleepy parish council to full gatherings of major unitary authorities."
Now, he says: "In ten short years, most town-halls have been downgraded from arenas of rigorous (if occasionally turgid) argument to supine talking-shops in which all but the most tenacious overview and scrutiny committee kowtows to the diktats of a Westminster-style cabinet."
The result, he continues, is "a localised version of cabinet government and a new form of elective dictatorship gave the biggest parties disproportionate sway over their own 'backbench' councillors, opposition groupings, and, more importantly, the voting public.
"Of greatest concern to journalists has not been the increased concentration of power but the means the Local Government Act 2000 gave cabinets to formulate - and largely determine - policy in secret."
Morrison says his research research confirms, widespread frustration about the culture of cabinet decision-making.
"When asked about its impact on their work, editor after editor criticised their local councils as secretive, with several commenting that, despite nominally meeting in public, cabinets appeared to routinely take decisions privately beforehand. Hardly surprising that, as a Press Association survey found last year, two-thirds of local newspapers are devoting fewer staff and less time to chasing council stories than in 1999.
"Even in an age when burgeoning web operations mean there’s more space than ever to be 'filled,' the prospect of returning empty-handed from a meeting means it’s simply not worth staffing it."
He concludes:" Today most items are steamrollered through full council meetings (House of Commons-style) after largely being sewn up beforehand."
Only last week, we reported on the launch of the new Boston Bulletin, an online newsletter which Interim Chief Executive Richard Harbord said he hoped would help the workings of the council become "ever more transparent and open."
Transparency and openness are movable feasts.
If, as is the case in Boston, the ruling administration keeps as much of its operation as it can a secret, then to dole out a few crumbs of information scarcely counts as transparency.
It more closely resembles contempt, and that is something that voters have become well familiar with during these past three years.
You can write to us at boston.eye@googlemail.com Your e-mails will be treated in confidence and published anonymously if requested.
No comments:
Post a Comment