Political Assistants and the Future of Our Committee Structure

I am pleased to see the recent press coverage on this issue.

The Chief Executive's Response was quite fair.

My point all along is that there is no point having silly debates on the level of Councillors Allowances when these are set by a London-wide process.

Instead Cllr John Kennedy has raised a much more useful point about the number of Committees. This seems an area where all sides could agree to some savings, which could for example then be used to develop ward budgets for Councillors to spend in their local community after consulting residents.

It seems sensible, now we are an "Excellent Council" to get rid of some of the pointless performance committees (Community Engagement and Environment and Leisure would be a start, with some Committee's retained for external partner scrutiny (Housing, Health, Schools etc), whilst more work is done at Area level and at SCAG level. This could also be tied in with devolved budgets for Areas and to Ward Councillors.

I think it is possible to even secure some consensus on a more effective approach to Committees.