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Too many deputations for a listening council?
• YOUR comment on the way in which the new Tory/Liberal Democrat administration rushes its decisions through the council resonates with my experience of decision-making (The listening council with its ears closed to voters, November 22).
New Journal readers should be aware that in the small print of a recent review the Tories’ and Lib Dems’ plan to review the public deputation process at the Town Hall and to place limits on people’s rights to speak. They say that there are too many deputations, and that they chew into the more limited time the Town Hall now spends on scrutinising its policies.
With the scale of the cuts going on, and the limitations now placed on opposition scrutiny, one of the only opportunities local people have to challenge flawed decisions like Frank Barnes school or the intentionally lightweight council housing consultation is by petition and deputation straight to the top.
Unless people speak up, this route too looks likely to be closed by those who think they know best.
CLLR THEO BLACKWELL
Labour, Regent’s Park ward
Merely a veneer of democratic involvement
• YOUR leader (The listening council with its ears closed to voters, November 22) on bogus council consultations is spot on.
They are merely exercises to give a specious veneer of democratic involvement.
Those who attend meetings are few and, in my experience, are always wildly unrepresentative of the population of Camden. Where questionnaires are used to compile “official statistics” their results are worthless because those who reply are self-selected and consequently do not represent a scientific selected sample of public opinion.
There is a woeful lack of security in the collection of data. Take the current Investing in Camden’s Homes questionnaire, which has recently been heavily advertised in the New Journal by the council.
To date I have received no less than four of the leaflets with attached questionnaires, two through the post, one at a tenants’ and residents’ association meeting addressed by a council officer and one at a council-run workshop.
I could have returned all four using different names and addresses with little chance of being discovered because few people return the questionnaires.
Literature produced by the council is designed solely with the intention of “selling” the council’s already decided policy and, in pursuit of this end, invariably fails to adequately put forward the disadvantages of the policy – the vast library of literature produced by the council during the 2003 arms-length management organisation (Almo) campaign contained only one mention of a disadvantage arising from an Almo and that was a quote from a tenant not advice from the council.
As you point out, on the rare occasions when people are given a vote, the response the council gets is at odds with council policy.
In the case of the Almo vote, the council’s proposal was rejected by a humiliating 77 per cent of tenants and leaseholders.
If the council was serious about finding out what Camden residents want, they would employ professional market researchers to conduct research based on scientific samples, issue literature which meaningfully puts forward the disadvantages of policies and hold referenda on major local issues.
The present dismal situation is a consequence of the decline of local politics.
Thirty years ago local government was not simply an adjunct of national politics.
There were many councillors who wore the major party labels then, of course, but they did not tie the local party rigidly to the national party’s policies.
There was also a healthy sprinkling of independents.
Today local politics is utterly dominated by members of the major Westminister parties and the overwhelming majority of these people slavishly adhere to their national party policies.
ROBERT HENDERSON
Chalton Street,
NW1
Blame lies with Gordon Brown’s government
• I HAVE read your New Journal editorials, I have listened via webcast to the deputations to the Town Hall.
Now I would like to tell you in three simple words why you and deputation spokespeople should stop bellyaching about Camden Council. The three words are: Labour government policy.
You and speakers for Town Hall deputations seem to suppose that consultation can somehow change the facts about the world we live in. Alas, it just ain’t so.
Consultation has no power to make impossible dreams come true. It cannot help a local authority fly against the will of central government.
Camden Council has to operate within the rules set down by the central government.
I live south of the Euston Road.
Of course, I support the well-documented claim that we need a new secondary school in this part of the borough. But I also know that there is no site available which meets the criteria set by the Labour government where Camden could provide such a school within the timetable the Labour government has set for the Labour government’s Building Schools for the Future programme, the rules of which are determined by the Labour government.
Similarly Old Labour dogmatists oppose academies, and whine unceasingly if consultation fails to kill off plans that Camden should soon have quite an exceptional one backed by one of the world’s top universities.
Yet university-supported academies are a flagship project of the New Labour government – so much so that the New Labour government has specifically waived the requirement in such schemes for the £2 million up-front funding demanded from other sponsors.
Time and time again we have Old Labour complainants clamouring against Camden Council, when Camden is simply trying to do its best for the borough in a context determined by the New Labour government.
A classic example is the housing consultation which you refer to at the end of last week’s editorial. You say Labour (that’s Camden Labour) allowed tenants “a proper say” and “privatisation plans were beaten off”.
What you signally fail to mention at all is that ever since that rejection of their plans, the New Labour government has withheld £283 million of urgently required money to bring Camden Council homes up to decent standard. Camden Labour were left powerless, and bequeathed their successors steadily deteriorating housing stock and no money to put things right. Some success for consultation that! Nothing to boast about.
It is grotesque that council tenants and schoolchildren should be held hostage while Old Labour and New Labour fight their fratricidal civil wars over policy and public spending.
We in Camden need money to put council homes into decent repair. We just as urgently need the £200 million funding from the Building Schools for the Future programme to improve and enlarge Camden’s secondary schools.
Camden’s administration is to be congratulated for adopting a pragmatic, non-ideological approach to seeking practical solutions to Labour-created problems. The council is seeking the best for residents within the constraints imposed by the Labour government, and frankly I think they are making a pretty good job of it.
And consultation does continue to make a difference too.
That is why I will be attending the launch of my ward (Bloomsbury) area forum at the University of London Students’ Union, Malet Street, on Tuesday evening, December 4.
That is why consultation about raising money for housing repairs is continuing on a step-by-step basis.
That is why Camden is devoting resources to working with campaigners south of the Euston Road, and hopefully with neighbouring education authorities, to continue the quest for a new secondary school in our area.
Is it you, Sir, who isn’t listening?
ROBIN YOUNG
Bedford Avenue, WC1
They don’t want to hear from you
• YOUR editorial last week has the Lib Dem/Tory executive bang to rights (The listening council with its ears closed to voters, November 22).
Both parties made the charge that councillors in the Town Hall were arrogant and out of touch as a key plank of their election campaign last year. Elect us, they said, and you’ll get a listening council.
Having seen how they behave in power, if I was a Lib Dem or Tory voter, I’d ask for my money back. They pre-empt consultations by implementing policy before finding out what people think, like they’ve done by starting to sell off council homes. It took them more than a year to set up their much-heralded area forums, but it turns out these bodies have no real powers and no clear impact on decision-making.
And now it seems the Lib Dems and Tories want to cut back on deputations at council meetings – presumably because it is all too clear that the council isn’t that interested in hearing what deputations have to say.
The only people the Lib Dems and Tories want to listen to is themselves.
MIKE KATZ
Chair, Hampstead & Kilburn Labour Party, NW6
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