'Core Councillors'

Core Councillors

Written for the Blog by a Preston Resident

I often refer to ‘Core councillors’, these are the councillors who have been on the council since before 1999 and in that time have achieved so little for Preston or it’s residents.

By there own admission, the sum total of their achievements is a few bulbs, a couple of trees and grassing over a very small patch of land (old public toilets). Let us just think about that for a couple of moments…13 councillors over 13 years, we can put that into a working timescale?

13 councillors meet for about 2 hours every month (except August) over 13 years or 3,718 Hours. Every year is equivalent to a person working full time for seven and a half weeks. Over 13 years that equates to a person working full time for about two years.

Any person working for two years with just a couple of trees and a few daffy bulbs planted and a few square feet of grass sown would have been sacked after the first week. You would very reasonably expect any working person to complete those tasks in any morning of any working day! So how did these councillors manage to survive?

That was done by alienating residents and keeping them away from council meetings and at the same time making sure they (residents) had no appetite for contacting the council for any reason. This enabled councillors to work in isolation without scrutiny, checks or balances they had a free hand!

I have read many minutes from different Parish Councils from around the country, many of them under the heading ‘Public Participation’, list the numbers of public attending their council meetings and many record their comments and items they raise. In the case of Preston that virtually never happens, ‘Public Participation is always empty except for the minutes relating to 11^th May 2011. The only record of attending public at Preston council meetings appears in the ‘Newsletter’ which states ‘council meetings continue to be well attended’, presumably by members of the public and if so simply isn’t true, I attend most council meetings and more often that not I’m the only one there.

There is virtually no interest from residents in the parish council and that won’t change until the council shows a little leadership and makes a sustained effort to re-connect with residents. This particular piece of work by the previous administration was very well done and so it will take some undoing.

To secure the council as a closed shop and maintain control in the hands of just a couple of councillors the council had to be organised in a particular way. A few councillors (no more than 5, the ‘core group’) would occupy their seats for their own reasons, a smaller number within that group would occupy the 2 most senior positions and dictate all policy and action by the council with the remaining seats (possibly 8) taken up by co-opted councillors carefully chosen by the ‘core group’. The 2 most senior positions would then alternate between the same 2 councillors for the duration (many years).

They denied any resident the opportunity to elect residents of their choice onto the council by having 5 or 6 councillors stand down prior to common elections, a safe bet because they (councillors) had already destroyed public interest in the council and they knew there would be no interest in any residents joining them. Following the elections the council would simply co-opt whoever they (councillors) wanted to join them and they have passed through the ‘election’ without any disruption.

Councillors also need to ensure that any casual vacancies that arise during the term of the council are filled by co-option, so they maintain full control. This is done by adhering to the absolute minimum of advertising required by law ensuring the least number of residents as possible know about the vacancy, they have already discouraged residents from wanting to join the council so within a couple of weeks they are clear to seek a person of their own choice, it would need to be someone guaranteed to not interfere with or challenge their running of the council, it’s their choice alone and it’s airtight!

The council have operated this model since at least the mid 1990’s and it has proven to be very successful for them, I’m sure they now wish to re-instate that model. An element of the model was to ensure the policies of the council fitted the desires and wishes of probably two people, the Chairman and Vice Chairman. These two positions dictated policy and direction to all other members of the council, if you look through the years in question you will probably find that the same two people alternated the positions between themselves and by doing so dominated the council.

Was this kind of corruption a good thing for Preston, did it lead to major improvements to the village or the lives of residents by 2 visionary councillors? Absolutely not, we have already established their achievements because the council has told us what those achievements were after three months of consideration and they amount to a couple of trees planted, a few daffodil bulbs planted and the area of a public toilet grassed over.

With that kind of performance there must have been some negatives because if that’s the sum total of their achievements after 13 years things really don’t look good.

The council set up a charity for the provision of a New Community Hall, they did eventually manage to set up the charity but in doing so ended up extending the time required and therefore the legal fees involved. I have it on very good authority that the final cost of circa. £3500 was three times that originally estimated because the Parish Council failed to return documents within timescales and they had to be done over again.

Again on the New Community Hall the council spent about £7,800 on drawings (minutes 130906, 140207 and 140606) according to minutes obtained from the council, with cost of application, building regs etc. the cost is probably around £10,000. This money was spent at a time when there was no realistic chance of realizing the plans by building a New Community Hall, no funds were available and there was no prospect of raising the funds in the foreseeable future.

These plans have now been abandoned and in fact a section of the Planning Permission was allowed to lapse in January 2011, this represents a total and utter waste of our money on a hair brained scheme that had no chance of getting off the ground.

The council has consistently brushed residents aside for many years and discouraged them from making contact with the council. The council would advise any resident to go off and complain to Authorities such as, Standards Committee, Information Commissioner’s Office, and Audit Commission etc.

Any resident would naturally think the council would be aware of the consequences of such advice as they are the experts and understand how these things operate, I consider that view quite reasonable, after all you would expect an accountant to be able to count!

On one occasion the council didn’t want to discuss issues raised by a resident and so advised him to complain to the Audit Commission which he duly did. That complaint resulted in the Parish Council being audited at a cost of approx £8,750 to the Parish Council.

This money does not belong to a couple of councillors to waste (would they spend their own money like this, I think not) it belongs to residents and we have the right to expect people we elect as our representatives to spend that money wisely and in a manner that gives a commensurate benefit back to the community.

Just the items listed here (and they are by no means the only items) amount to £22,050 and that’s a conservative estimate.

So, those ‘core councillors’ I keep referring to not only treat the Parish Council as their own little playpen but they use our money as though it’s fresh out of the Monopoly box.

These same councillors do not tell the truth if it doesn’t suite them they are prepared and quite happy to lie when it suites them, not just to residents but also to official bodies as I shall show in a coming post.

The same councillors show total contempt for the laws that govern our Local Democracy and Local Government as we shall show in an upcoming post.

These same councillors are still running your village and still spending your money, it’s time for residents to say ‘no more’ and bring these people to account.