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Our politicians have become consultantaholics
ADDICTIONS take many forms. Some people are addicted to drink or drugs.
But another addiction lurks behinds the staid walls of the Town Hall – an addiction to the use of consultants.
It’s a new phenomenon that can be traced back to the early 1990s, when the rules of the market economy were introduced into the life and business of Camden Council, as they were throughout the country.
Politicians and senior officials of the former Labour administration were the first to fall victim to the addiction.
Now, the Tory-Lib Dem coalition display the same intense infatuation.
However much they may boast that they are different from Labour, the present regime follows the same pattern.
Baffled, we ask: aren’t experienced officials capable of carrying out the same level of research consultants engage in?
If they performed this task – as municipal civil servants successfully did in the past century – costs would come down, and, perhaps, more sensible conclusions would be reached by officials who have a long connection with the borough.
However, politicians seem to go round in circles whatever their party affiliation. This newspaper reported in the past on the use of consultants by the library service.
But what was not known, until we obtained data through the Freedom of Information Act, was that the library consultants were being paid £2,000 a day for their services, a total of £47,000.
So now we have discovered just how much the contract cost the public.
However, this newspaper faces an excruciatingly difficult uphill task of discovering exactly what ideas the consultants came up with.
So far, council officials – supported, presumably, by the Tory-Lib Dem councillors – have displayed their usual level of arrogance in refusing to present the public with the full picture.
At one level, one can only ask: who is the real sovereign body in Camden – council officials and councillors or the people of the borough?
• FAMILIARITY may be breeding ill feeling in what must be one of the longest planning disputes in the borough – the application by two brothers to build a house very near Hampstead Heath pond.
Progress may be made if each side clears emotions out of the way.
It must be recognised, however, that public-spirited people have banded together for more than 200 years to protect the integrity of the Heath. This can only be applauded.
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