The Quiet Revolution

Whilst all eyes have been focused on the Mayor since his election last October, a quiet revolution has been going on elsewhere on the Council.

The Mayor and his hand-picked Cabinet are responsible for almost all the decisions on the Council, so you might wonder what the other Councillors do! They are responsible for reviewing policies and making suggestions to the Mayor and Cabinet of ways to improve the services the Council delivers. It may sound limited but Councillors have been reviewing how this operates and are determined that the policy reviews will live up to their potential.

A mainstay of the new style system will be greater public involvement with the views of the public and specialist witnesses sought to make sure decisions are in the best interests of local people.

Christine McHugh, Liberal Democrat spokesperson on Environment said:

"The power of policy reviews is actually quite exciting. The Council delivers services that affect people's day to day lives, ranging from refuse collection, street cleansing, housing advice, benefit administration to provision of leisure facilities. We want to know what people think of these services, members of the public, professionals and interested groups. We genuinely want their views."

The first review Environment will be undertaking is of the new recycling scheme that has certainly had some teething troubles. If we're to avoid those problems in the next phase it's important that we take a good, hard look at how the system operated and how it can be improved. I'd ask people to look out for news of reviews in the papers and the Council paper and if you have a view, we'd like to hear it."