| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:What is being done: | |
| Posted by: | Adam Beamish | |
| Date/Time: | 20/07/12 12:37:00 |
| Precisely John, whilst I have no doubt the decisions made by H&CAC (as a collective, as several individual Councillors opposed such decisions) on some enforcement matters did not have material planning considerations at their heart, what those decisions did have at their heart was the interest of some members of the public. There were countless times when I was asked by certain Members of the Area Committees, usually in front of their constituent, if I would write a "softly softly report" on an enforcement matter. If you take the notion that my job was to serve the public literally then I should have done so. Of course I never did, and those Members knew I never would, but they had to be seen to ask me to do so, and my response was always "I'll write a detailed, fair report setting out all of the relevant planning considerations". I've had other Members tell me in private that a constituent was "a pain in the ass who's wasting everyone's time " but in public they still had to respond to that constituent's concerns, raise them with Officers etc. In the shop floor reality of working for a Council, serving the public is simply not that simple, and I genuinely think that many constituents simply never stop to realise the many different directions Councils are expected to jump in, and only consider their wishes as being important. What has really struck me from threads like this is, like you, is that at every Council I worked I had a good professional relationship with Members, of course sometimes we disagreed etc. but I still feel 6 years after leaving Hounslow that I could happily have a friendly chat with any Member, indeed I enjoy bumping into both Officers and Members from time to time, whereas now things seem to be very different, and the use of these forums by Members to bad mouth Officers (who for obvious reasons will never respond and thus 'the public' only ever hear one side of the story) is only going to damage relations further. |