Many of those who are contacting us now are pointing us in the direction of Minutes of council meetings, especially those of Select committees which do sometimes make for very interesting reading.
Let us firstly offer some words of advice, at the beginning of any agenda there is an item asking members to declare any interest, it appears that many of the new members either do not know what this means or choose to ignore it, which if they carry on could cause them problems.
Recently the Safer and Communities select committee received a report consulting them on the proposed new way forward for Council Grants.........now any member who had taken the trouble to read the report beforehand, and of course had any common sense would have realized that working for a voluntary sector organization that is funded by the council should have declared an interest at the beginning of the meeting. Of course we were surprised to see there were no declarations of interest minuted. There should have been!!!!
Then we come to the discussion no doubt started by the Lead Member who wants to see more council grant funding go to Tenants and Residents Associations, (well we all know the reasons why that is).
Well lets air an argument we understand from our sources that has been going on for a long time with regard to funding for these "elite" groups. (a) they are funded from the Housing Revenue Account, therefore no resident who is not a council tenant should benefit from the funding given by the council to these groups, and they should in fact be only Tenants Associations. (b) and why,( if has been suggested that the funding for these groups comes from the General Fund) when cuts are going to come, probably to much needed council services, should the council tax payers money fund "elite" groups such as these.
We should all be thankful that in the Minutes of the Cabinet Meeting where these appalling suggestions were reported that the wise heads in the Cabinet NOTED the report. At least the council tax payers in Barking & Dagenham can take some comfort that the Cabinet Members will use their experience and good, sound judgement to kick the irresponsible suggestions put forward by certain self seeking members who FAIL to declare their interests into touch.
We will continue to monitor the progress in the Minutes.
