Musings of an Ex-Councillor on the 2014 Local Harrow Council Elections
Congratulations to all those that won a place on the council
for the next four years. If you take being a councillor seriously then you are
in for four years of:
Reading
I used to measure my reading by the inch rather than the
page. It's not just the officer reports for the various committees that you serve,
it is also the background reading so that you can understand the subject of the
officer's reports. There are also the documents that belong to the external
bodies that you are appointed to, such as local charities or the board of
governors of local schools. In addition you have a volume of email from the
council, from the residents you represent and from a range of organisations
that are trying to influence or inform you or raise the status of an event that
they are organising by requesting your attendance.
Discussing
Largely within your own party group, but these discussions
are really important. Aggregation of the various skills, backgrounds,
personality, views from your local area and intelligence of the individuals
within your group is important in developing the composite ability of the party
group and to develop its knowledge. The composite of all of you will provide a
better all-round view of what our communities want and make for better policy
making. There will be rows, big ones, but no matter what the differences are
they should not spill out of the party group, once the idea has been voted upon
and agreed by the majority, then that should be the view of the whole group. Councillors,
though, need a kind of ideas “litter” where crap ideas can be deposited and challenged
without public castigation. The party groups fulfil that function quite wellJ.
Hold onto the belief that you achieve far more together than is possible as an
individual. Remember the last Labour group, the damage due to their split and
what subsequently happened in the election to the individuals that split away from the party
group.
The advantages of aggregation do not appear to exist for
independent members and is probably one of their weaknesses.
Attending meetings
Some will be terminally boring and often characterised by
poor questions from councillor colleagues that appear to either not read their
documents or who fail to understand them. Often council meetings and the
sub-committees degenerate into political point scoring, but at their best they
embody excellent cross party cooperation. I certainly valued the ideas of
colleagues from all parties (and none). Sadly independent members appeared to
take little part in these important sub-committees as the statistics below
indicate. You can see the full statistics of attendance on the following webpage
Meeting attendances for the last 4 years taken from
the council website:
Top attenders
Councillor
|
Meetings Attended
|
Affiliation
|
Thaya Idaikkadar
|
193
|
ILG & Labour
|
Keith Ferry
|
167
|
Labour
|
Susan Hall
|
145
|
Conservative
|
Independents and single member parties
Councillor
|
Meetings Attended
|
affiliation
|
Christopher Noyce
|
29
|
Liberal Democrat
|
Stanley Sheinwald
|
29
|
Independent & Conservative
|
James Bond
|
28
|
Independent
|
My own attendance figure was 132
Training:
You should budget to spend a significant number of evenings
over the next few months at the excellent series training courses that Harrow
Council officers will provide. These training courses are regarded as amongst
the best provided by any local authority in the country. They are so good that
they used to attract a “Quality Mark”. Sadly this was lost because at the last
external assessment we could not show that sufficient Councillors turned up to
avail themselves of this excellent training. I think that the average figure
for Councillor attendees was around 20%. I remember feeling very sorry for the
officers who had spent so much effort to develop and deliver the training to
have so few councillors attend. I remember the frustration expressed by the
councillor who chaired the Members Development Panel at the low take up of the
training.
Much more can be said,
and probably will be. But to finish:
Last pieces of advice…
- Make sure that you make a
positive effort to meet as many ordinary people in the ward you represent,
attend resident association meetings, Safer Neighbourhood Panel meetings
etc. so that you are fully in touch with the people and can represent them
fairly.
- Get involved with the council
sub-committees and policy making (those that do not will show up on the
council attendance statistics)
- Stay in touch with the
members of your own party in the ward that you represent, particularly if
you do not live there, make sure that you attend their meetings.
- And! Attend the training
courses!!
Best wishes to all 63 of you…
Follow me on Twitter at @Pinns35
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