| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Hounslow Officers run the Council not your elected councillors | |
| Posted by: | Phil Andrews | |
| Date/Time: | 11/07/12 07:17:00 |
| Adam Your professional qualifications, your expertise and even your personal qualities are not being challenged in any way. You have, on more than one occasion, expressed the view that as an officer of the Council you did not consider yourself to have been working for the public. Your honesty in saying that is respected, but it is not a view that would be conducive to holding high office at a Council that places community empowerment at the core of its entire being. This doesn't in any way mean that I think the community is always right, or that everybody within it is as pure as the driven snow or without a personal agenda, but none of this negates the essential truth that at a local authority both councillors and officers exist to serve the public and not the other way around. As a democratic institution of government that has to be the raison d'etre of a local authority, and its existence makes absolutely no sense if it isn't. We have an Environment Department in Hounslow at present which runs fairly much according to your philosophy and my single biggest regret about our time in office is that as community councillors we did not find the time to take an axe to the whole sorry set-up, no matter what the short-term cost to the public. The Lead Member with responsibility for Environment under the administration of which we were part was an efficient, experienced, conscientious and thoroughly honest councillor who did a good job in managing the department in terms of its day to day operation, but in my view was the last person we would have chosen to do what needed to be done. Environment needed a butcher not a conciliator. On a personal level I must confess that my priority when assuming office was dealing with Housing, and there I found myself up against a wall of organised opposition from officers, union leaders (although not the members), political opponents and even the official "residents' representatives" and coming out of that lot on top, which I believe I did, took a lot of my time and energy. It was, in microcosm, a battle for the soul of local democracy between two fundamentally opposing philosophies, essentially mine and yours. The similar problems that existed in Environment were not immediately apparent, and we exacerbated them massively by appointing the present incumbent to the most senior post. I even voted for the man at his selection panel! Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it can be very cruel. |