The “Cabinet System” of running the District Council is only 3 days old, but already a lot of councillors – Lib Dems and Conservatives – are feeling disillusioned.
It’s supposed to be more efficient and businesslike – . But the cabinet member with responsibility for the councils website and IT doesn’t even have a computer at home or an email address. How many businesses would make a decision like that?
Having area committees is supposed to make the council more responsive to local people – but the first meeting of the committee for Rayleigh and Rawreth isn’t until Weds 18th July . This will be in Rayleigh Methodist Church in Eastwood Road. Considering the number of issues affecting the area, this is really slow.
We were also promised that things would be kept democratic. So the meetings of the Cabinet would be held in the evening , meaning:
The Conservative Leadership (or to be more accurate , half the leadership) now want to have the Cabinet Meetings in the afternoons. So after only a couple of days, they are already trying to make things less open and democratic! We will be fiercely resisting this.