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COMMENT
 
Heather says her hands are clean

THE nasty row simmering over the redevelopment scheme in Euston Road, which could become quite brutish, has an antecedent in another scheme that plagued local politics five years ago.
At that time, opponents of a proposal to redevelop Hampstead Theatre and market site in Swiss Cottage felt cheated because three councillors – Councillors Dave Horan, Flick Rea and John Thane – who sat on the theatre board, and therefore could be said to have had a conflict of interest, nevertheless took part in the crucial vote that gave the green light to the scheme.
This week, a similar situation arose when Councillor Heather Johnson, who chairs the planning committee, found herself in the iniquitous position of casting a decisive vote on the Euston Road scheme supported by the West Euston Partnership – the very body in which Cllr Johnson plays a significant role as a Board member.
Cllr Johnson argues her hands are clean because she absented herself when the Partnership discussed the project originally.
But this has a ring of unreality about it.
It would be to accept a faulty premise that she has gone about her work as a Board member of the Partnership with a completely shut mind during the last few weeks, if not months, while the scheme would have presumably been, at the very least, the subject of conversation and gossip.
In our opinion Cllr Johnson, in terms of ethics and politics, should have stood back and not intervened in the planning committee’s voting process.
By failing to do this, a cloud now hovers over the committee’s decision. It is quite possible that eventually a complaint will be made to the Standards Board.
Any councillor who sits on the board of a local grant-aided organisation or one financially enmeshed with the council must behave in such a manner that no suspicion of any sort can be attached to him or her. There have been too many instances since the 1980s where councillors have failed this test.
New Labour may have tried over the years to build- in safeguards to protect the political integrity of councillors sitting on various partnerships and regenerative bodies, but the row over the Euston Road scheme illustrates that it is not always possible to create a faultless system. Once, a local authority went about its business as a public body – and steered clear of too much involvement with private companies. Since the creation of a public-private partnership under New Labour the lines of demarcation have become too blurred.
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