Sean Brennan for ever - The Local Government White Paper
The proposals in the White Paper seem broadly sensible, though they do seem to take away much of what is left of the Lyons Review, due to report shortly.
The following points are relevant to Sutton:
1. I presume the Lib Dems will want to go for a Council Leader elected for 4 years. This Sean Brennan is likely to be voted by the Council up to 2010. He will then appoint a Cabinet. I assume this will be a formality rather than leading to a Leadership election within the Lib Dems? Perhaps we should also have a further debate on whether an elected Mayor of the borough is appropriate.
2. Overview and Scrutiny will be expanded to cover areas wider than health, such as Policing. I think Scrutiny staff should be appointed by a panel of backbench Councillors.
3. The Standards regime on interests will be relaxed to enable Councillors to not prejudice themselves on local issues. This is a democratic victory over the previous legalistic regime.
4. More powers for local Councillors to stand up for their local communities and bring issues for scrutiny. Sutton will probably cover this through its area Committees.
5. Community ownership of assets. Perhaps this could be applied to libraries, parks leisure and heritage centres?
6. The right to set up a Parish Council's. Area Committees and Neighbourhood Forums should debate this issue first rather than there being a borough corporate review. This would be much more in the spirit of localism.
7. Local Independence over Byelaws. Sutton has reviewed these, but we could now debate other ones.
8. Combined Community Safety Teams. Sutton is ahead of the game on this issue and may have more Councils visit to see how it operates.
9. Local Ward Councillor Devolved budgets. This shouls be a 2006/07 budget growth item with the money that the Tories don't want spent on Councillors allowances shiftewd to this so that each group of ward Councillors has a £10,000 budget - a total of just £180,000 out of a borough budget of quarter of a billion pounds.
10. Less targets, but clearer local performance information for the public.
11. Stronger Council Leadership in Local Strategic Partnerships with the Leader of the Council deciding who should lead the LSP.
All the above is very welcome. I hope the Council uses all the new powers. I will cover many of the issues in more detail on this blog and in the Policy4Sutton Blog in the coming months.
The following points are relevant to Sutton:
1. I presume the Lib Dems will want to go for a Council Leader elected for 4 years. This Sean Brennan is likely to be voted by the Council up to 2010. He will then appoint a Cabinet. I assume this will be a formality rather than leading to a Leadership election within the Lib Dems? Perhaps we should also have a further debate on whether an elected Mayor of the borough is appropriate.
2. Overview and Scrutiny will be expanded to cover areas wider than health, such as Policing. I think Scrutiny staff should be appointed by a panel of backbench Councillors.
3. The Standards regime on interests will be relaxed to enable Councillors to not prejudice themselves on local issues. This is a democratic victory over the previous legalistic regime.
4. More powers for local Councillors to stand up for their local communities and bring issues for scrutiny. Sutton will probably cover this through its area Committees.
5. Community ownership of assets. Perhaps this could be applied to libraries, parks leisure and heritage centres?
6. The right to set up a Parish Council's. Area Committees and Neighbourhood Forums should debate this issue first rather than there being a borough corporate review. This would be much more in the spirit of localism.
7. Local Independence over Byelaws. Sutton has reviewed these, but we could now debate other ones.
8. Combined Community Safety Teams. Sutton is ahead of the game on this issue and may have more Councils visit to see how it operates.
9. Local Ward Councillor Devolved budgets. This shouls be a 2006/07 budget growth item with the money that the Tories don't want spent on Councillors allowances shiftewd to this so that each group of ward Councillors has a £10,000 budget - a total of just £180,000 out of a borough budget of quarter of a billion pounds.
10. Less targets, but clearer local performance information for the public.
11. Stronger Council Leadership in Local Strategic Partnerships with the Leader of the Council deciding who should lead the LSP.
All the above is very welcome. I hope the Council uses all the new powers. I will cover many of the issues in more detail on this blog and in the Policy4Sutton Blog in the coming months.
posted by Charlie Mansell at 6:07 pm
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