For anyone who hasn’t noticed, there is a huge row brewing over the placing of a £4.2m contract for new wheelie bins with a foreign company when a UK company bid £250,000 less.

Durham County Council has tendered this contract following European regulations. However, no councillors were involved at any stage in looking at the terms of this contract. This is very similar to the problem which occurred with the Park and Ride. At the time many councillors myself included called on the council to involve councillors in looking at the terms of contracts which are considered to be important – front facing, risk of embarassment to council etc. To date this has not happened. Officers are still carrying on, I presume with the Labour-run council cabinet approval, not involving back bench or opposition councillors in any way.

This is not about interference by councillors in the procurement process. This is about ensuring that things like scoring systems are discussed so that if something does go wrong, councillors can be called into question. After all, officers are not elected, councillors are. The trouble is that Durham County Council is so undemocratic that the whole system of accountability has collapsed to nothing more than rubber stamping.

When opposition councillors tried to call in the decision to close leisure centres – meaning to investigate it, we were refused by the Labour Chair of Scrutiny. The same happened with the closure of the Care Centres. At every step Labour seeks to run County Hall like a dictatorship. Even backbench Labour councillors are frustrated at this.

I have come to the conclusion that County Durham will never be able to move forward while Durham County Council is run by the Labour Party and urge every voter in this county to vote them out at the next local elections in 2013. I would prefer that to be by voting Lib Dem, but one way or the other we must get control of County Durham back into the hands of the people who live in it. We can’t have another 50 years of Labour control. It is no coincidence that our County is one of the poorest in England.

As for the Bin contract, I know that opposition councillors from various groups are seeking to get clarification on this issue and will be pushing to get much more information out into the public domain. Indeed if my requests for additional information are not forthcoming then I have asked that it is provided through a freedom of information request. Many residents will be surprised to learn that there are numerous occasions when the council refuse to provide information to me and I have to go down this avenue.