Questions From the Greens

October

30

5 comments

Councillors Michael and Diane Hoy have submitted the following questions to Full Council on Wednesday:

1.2 From Cllr Mrs D Hoy:-
Of the Leader of the Council
Further to the question I asked at the meeting in June and the full answer I
received could you please advise me:-
(1) Of the income received for advertising within Rochford District Matters,
how much is generated from Rochford District Council itself?
(2) In the answer given in June it was stated that a measure of Rochford
Districts Matters circulation was through the feedback received by the
Council to articles and notices in it. For the record, how many
communications (split by letters, emails and phone calls) were received
from the public directly in relation to items in Rochford District Matters
over the last financial year?

1.3 From Cllr M Hoy:-
Of the Portfolio Holder for Young Persons, Adult Services, Community
Care and Well Being, Health and Community Safety
With regard to the Ageing Population Strategy 2011-14:-
(1) On page 15 the Strategy talks about ?Support the financial security of
older people?.
Current provision includes ?Signpost those who cannot pay their bills to
the Citizens Advice Bureau and similar organisations?.
The objectives for Action includes ?Continue to support financial and
income advice services, such as the Citizens Advice Bureau?.
How do you reconcile the pointing of people towards the Citizens Advice
Bureau for help whilst at the same time cutting its funding by a third?
(2) On page 16 the Strategy talks about ?Supporting Access to mainstream
services and information for older people?.
Current provision includes ?Supporting Wyvern Community Transport
Scheme?.

The objectives for Action includes ?Continue to support community
transport within the District?.
How do you reconcile this with the fact that Wyvern Community
Transport received no grant for the current year, despite a specific
request for ?5,000, and in fact the reason given was ??it received
funding from other sources??

It’s good to see a new councillor like Diane Hoy getting ‘stuck in’ and being active at full council….

About the author, admin

  • Getting “stuck in” is ok I guess but who needs to know the number of communications received by RDC split by type ? How much does it cost RDC to find out ?

  • I think the point of the question is to ascertain the value of Rochford Matters. Is it worth the cost of printing? There are certainly 2 views on this.

  • Rayleigh Resident (‘RR’) is quite correct to make his or her observation re the cost of those frequent questions by Green Party Members. It is a thought which has already occurred to many RDC Members not in the Green Party.
    Strangely, the Green Party Members of RDC appear to have a problem with the concept of their picking up a telephone or sending an email to ask a relevant RDC officer a question, as ALL Members of RDC may do, rather than require a full Council report to be written and circulated in hard copy.
    The conclusion must be that their frequent Public questions are made mostly in order to be perceived as ‘getting stuck-in’ or ‘active’, but in reality appear to be merely speculative trawls made for Green Party publicity at taxpayer expense and opportunity cost in officer time. I or they could ask RR’s question, but that would simply increase the usually pointless expense already caused by the Green Party Members.
    In this particular instance it would be far more beneficial, and I would be more sympathetic, if the Councillors Hoy had first identified any better and cheaper alternative means of informing RDC residents on the required apolitical basis than as currently via Rochford Matters. It is for every household in the District, whereas many residents do not have their own internet or email access and the Local Press often misunderstands and/or misreports Council matters with which they are not fully familiar.

  • Come now, Colin. Most councillors ask officers questions nearly every week by phone or email (I do, and I imagine Cllr Hoy does too). If the council administration can’t cope with one or two formal questions every few months then there is something very wrong. And if emails are being answered properly they take up almost as much time as formal questions. In any case, with formal questions, I would suppose that council officers merely provide the basic information and let the cabinet member concerned prepare their own answer.

    The great advantage of formal questions isn’t to do with publicity (because we can all issue press releases anyway). It’s that all councillors can get to hear the answer . e.g. when I asked at previous meetings about planning enforcement and the whole council was then told that over 500 cases were still ongoing.

    It is the job of all councillors – of whatever party- to check on what the council is doing.

    To put this into context, I recall that when Mark Francois MP was in opposition he asked 610 questions (yes, 610) in parliament in one year. He was doing his job.

  • Colin, I usually resist replying to you on this forum but in fairness, although no questions have been put to me, I will on this occasion answer your apparent concerns as well the obvious ones from Rayleigh Resident about costs.
    I can assure you Colin I do have a telephone (two actually) and a computer and do use them. You, I am sure, welcome the fact that I do speak to and meet/email officers of the council with regard to questions or queries I or fellow residents have. In addition I have spoken with Portfolio Holders, not you as it happens but certainly others. I have even arranged a residents meeting with one portfolio holder this year as well. In addition I am surprised you are not aware that I met with Cllr Terry Cutmore just this month, with a number of questions that he very kindly answered. I also meet with the Chief Executive of the council, twice privately and once, with Cllr Cutmore, Cllr Hudson and Cllr Black, this year.
    It is an unfortunate (possibly) fact that democracy costs money. If I call Cllr Seagers now it will cost the price of a phone call, my time (fairly cheap as it’s a Sunday) and Cllr Seagers time (possibly his Sunday dinner would get cold). With regard to opportunity costs the facts or information asked for by either myself or Cllr Mrs Hoy would have to have been collated, in whatever manner we asked the question, so no additional costs would be incurred to acquire the information by asking the question at Full Council. With regard to the specific question on Rochford Matters the breakdown of responses to articles etc was not given as it would be too costly to work out as figures are not kept. The only additional costs would be some paper, a sheet or two, and officer time, maybe 10-20 minutes.
    The questions we have put to Full Council are those which we believe the residents of the District as a whole should know about and that there should be a specific response on record we or the Council can point to as being the answer. Interestingly many Hullbridge residents had thought the cost of Rochford Matters was much greater than that shown to be the case by way of the answers given, however if Cllr Mrs Hoy had not asked the question on Wednesday many residents may have thought the overall costs were £6,000 lower than they actually were, based on the answer received at the previous meeting.
    The Full Council is the place where it is possible to hold the Executive democratically accountable through the right of councillors and residents to ask questions, and all questions asked by either myself or Cllr Mrs Hoy have been perfectly valid, incidentally Cllr Mrs Hoy has asked two in 6 months and I have asked, maybe 3-4 in 18 months, not exactly the speculative trawls as claimed.

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