COUNCIL TAX- after the savaging that Rochford District Council got in the Daily Mail, it would have been easy for us to have followed suit (perhaps a bit more accurately). But we decided to be a bit more subtle. So we made the points that
CONTRACTS -. One bit of welcome news. After a bit of criticism from our side, the council will now give ALL councillors some notice of when new council contracts are being dealt with by officers, so maybe we can keep a better eye on things:
1.2.7
Each quarter Members of the Council will be provided with the estimated values and a brief description of contracts that are proposed to be subject to competitive tendering. Such detail to be published in the Members? Bulletin and, more formally, through a report into the Executive for noting
CAR PARKS – The council looked at the results of the latest survey of car park users. We pointed out that it wasn’t exactly a statistically balance sample – for example – less than 1% of the replies came from the under 24s. And 61% were women.
FLOOD PREVENTION We were shown details of the Essex and Suffolk Shoreline Managment Plan – see our separate post on this.
GARDEN PARTY The final item of the evening was deciding which councillors would go to a Buckingham Palace garden party this summer. The situation was:
– two councillors would be able to go with their partners.
– council rules are that the councillors with the longest service who haven’t been to a garden party before as a council representative get to be picked.
– there were three councillors in the running – Ron Oatham, Barbara Wilkins and Colin Seagers. So they pulled names out of a bag.
The names “Wilkins” and Seagers came out, so Ron has to wait for next year….
Admin, your comments on the Cabinet System broadly reflect my concerns, detailed in the recent posting below. I would like to make clear that although similar these conclusions were independently reached.
However, I would go a step further. The Cabinet System results in:
– about 10% extra in the executive cost of running the council
– 4 layers of executive management,
– an average of over 3 execs for each of the 5 departments,
– an average cost of £180,000 per department.
For a smallish council the size of Rochford, I would suggest that the cost of the whole executive is simply too high.
Clearly others will disagree with this view but has any consideration been given to streamlining the executive management of the council and do you know if comparative pro-rata stats exist for other councils across Essex/elsewhere? That would give a good, independent indication of how cost effective RDC is being run?
Is it correct that transport will be provided for this trip by the Council? i.e as reported in local paper the use of Council vehicle and driver for the day.
How are the carpark surveys conducted? If it is mainly via stopping users in the carparks, and is normally carried out during normal weekday working hours, I would suspect most users would be young mums and pensioners.
Would this not be considered a balanced view of carpark users, even though it may not be a balanced view of residents of the district? The risk is that the views of less frequent users do not get captured.
Bruce , that’s right. The people going to the garden party have the use of the Council Chairman’s car and driver for the day, which I think is a good idea….