County Tories Reject Town Councillors' Role (Kenilworth and Southam Liberal Democrats)

County Tories Reject Town Councillors' Role

May 13, 2008 10:52 PM

At a full meeting of Warwickshire County Council today, the Conservative and Labour groups combined to defeat a Liberal Democrat amendment to a motion setting up Locality Working arrangements across the county.

Cllr John Whitehouse

The amendment, proposed by Councillor John Whitehouse (Liberal Democrat, Kenilworth Abbey) would have enabled the new Community Forums, being set up in 23 localities in Warwickshire, to be chaired by someone other than a county or district councillor. Liberal Democrats argued that town and parish councillors often were strong representatives of their local communities, and it would extend democratic accountability to allow them to chair the Community Forum where this suited local circumstances and where a majority of county and district councillors agreed.

However the ruling Conservatives, supported by Labour, rejected this course of action, and instead voted for arrangements that reserve the Forum chair's role exclusively for county or district councillors.

Councillor Whitehouse said after the meeting:

" I am frankly amazed that the Conservatives rejected this amendment, which was intended to be constructive and to allow the new Community Forums to adapt to local circumstances.

In particular I am surprised that the two other Kenilworth county councillors were prepared to go along with this. Kenilworth will be one of the new localities, and the new Community Forum will absorb and replace the existing Kenilworth Safer Neighbourhoods Panel - which is chaired currently by a Conservative town councillor. I would imagine that she will not be too pleased to discover that she has been voted out of her job by her Conservative colleagues!"

NOTES:

1. The Locality Proposals for Warwickshire can be found at Agenda Item 6. of the Annual Meeting of the County Council, 13th May 2008.

2. Appendix 3 (pages 17-18 of the report) sets out the Terms of Reference for the new Community Forums.

3. Paragraph 2 d) of the Appendix restricts the chair of the Forum to being either a county or district/borough councillor.

4. The Liberal Democrat amendment would have added the option to para. 2 d) as follows:

or, subject to a majority vote of all County and District/Borough Councillors in favour, any person residing or working in the locality may chair the Forum.

5. The amendment was defeated, with all Conservative and Labour members present voting against.

Kenilworth and Southam Liberal Democrats