Absolutely brilliant – Welcome to English Local Government.

There is a fundamental problem with English local government (never mind Scottish or Welsh – they can sort out their own problems because they have their own parliament and assembly – we in England have nothing).

In England we have unelected and publicly unaccountable council officials literally doing what they like whenever they like, councillors being ineffective at properly representing the public, important decisions being taken in de facto secrecy which means important information affecting the lives of local residents being withheld from them.

All this is actually called “Local Democracy”. Democracy? What a sick joke. England has never ever had true democracy of any kind – only a pathetic shambles of what democracy could, and should, be.

1. Local votes on local issues. Any resident from 11 upwards should be able to vote on something that affects, or could affect, them. The result of the vote should be binding on the local authority.

2. Regular three-monthly council meetings in different parts of the local authority area WITH all the directors and chief executive answering ad-hoc questions form the public that attend. No more should unelected council officials be able to make executive decisions (under the local authority’s delegation of ‘power’ from the councillors to officials) and then escape the consequences of their bad and ineffective work. They must, like councillors, be publicly accountable to the public they are being paid to serve.

3. The same with the police force – every three months public meetings with the Area Commander – sometimes called the Local Police Area (LPA) Commander – usually a Chief Inspector or Superintendent.

4. All senior council officials on continuous annual contracts – not given jobs for life – so it is easy and cheaper to fire ineffective top officials by having to give them a maximum of a year’s salary to go compared with the present system of SECRET – withheld from the public – pay-offs which could amount to £1/3 or even £1/2 million pounds.

I could go on like this for hours.

Paul Janik
PPPILA – Promoting Public Participation in Local Affairs.
01753-208111
slough.party (at) gmail.com

(coming sometime in September http://www.badgov.org.uk with examples of our wunderful local council with plenty of room for the achievements of other wunderful councils and public bodies)

I am going to write a book about appalling Stockport Council – working title:- A Four Star Council