Deckchairs and all that

Lib Dem AM and councillor Peter Black has some views (so what else is new?) regarding decision-making and accountability within local government.

It’s strange, but he was far less equivocal about the root cause of the problem nearly four years ago.

(The) Cabinet/Scrutiny system has concentrated power in the hands of fewer councillors, often from just the one party. Abandoning the real committee system means that most councillors are left just to ‘scrutinise’ decisions, and not to take part in them. This has been an expensive failure. It has been bad for local decision-making, bad for local democracy and bad for local communities.

The Welsh Liberal Democrats encourage all councils to abandon the cabinet system and return to a more open system. This would allow all councillors to be part of the decision-making process, so that all sections of the community would have an input.
From Lib-Dem AM Peter Black's website - 27 May 2004

In Swansea, other than a few changes in portfolio descriptions, the content and process for the cabinet system is precisely teh same as operated under the previous regime including roles, responsibilities, meetings, pre-meetings and report clearing . Even the agenda format is identical.

Perhaps this is all part of the “settling down” process he mentions. However, time is running out.