I don’t think I can add any more to this fromfellow councillor Nigel Martin – it is spot on – when are Labour going to realise that we are not going to go away and will continue to be the only party attacking their disgraceful record.

Over to Nigel:

Things at County Hall seem to be getting even more bizarre.

After a long staring contest earlier this year, Labour agreed to a small improvement to the system of call-in. This can happen when Cabinet takes a decision, but a group of non-cabinet members wants to have the matter reviewed before it is finally implemented.

In the old council, you had to persuade the Chair of Scrutiny (Labour) to agree or a Chair and Vice Chair 0f a scrutiny subcommittee (at least one Labour if not both) to support it. In practice that meant they had a veto and it was effectively impossible to get a call-in going.

In the new council any five members of a scrutiny committee can ask for a call-in and while the Chair of Scrutiny (still Labour) can veto it he has to stand up in public and justify why he has done so.

So far so good.

At the end of March, Cabinet agreed to build a new primary school in Esh Winning (something everyone supports) but they chose to build it on a green field site in the centre of the village against the wishes of the vast majority of people who responded to the local consultation, including the existing school management and governors.

So we decided that, since cabinet members had not visited either of the proposed sites and were going against the professional advice of the school management, the matter ought to be reviewed and we asked for a call-in.

At this point there is a procedural problem as the Chair of Scrutiny,  Councillor Joe Armstrong, had sent a letter to Cabinet in complete support of building on the green field site.So in our call-in request, we pointed out that Joe might be seen to have fettered his discretion, and asked that his Deputy make the decision on whether or not to accept the call-in.

All well and good, and the call in debate is to take place next Thursday (16 April) at 10.30 am at County Hall.

Now here comes the bizarre bit. Attached to the agenda papers for the meeting is a statement from the Council Monitoring Officer (chief legal advisor), that members of the Committee who have expressed a prior view on the issue can speak but must not vote, and consequentially that the members who asked for the call-in must also have a pre-determined view and so also should not vote.

This is utterly barmy. Scrutiny is not one of the quasi-judicial committees (like Planning or Licensing), so why cannot we argue on behalf of our constituents and vote on what we believe.

Surely that was what we were elected to do.