Shropshire Council plans summits on spending plans
Tuesday 22nd June 2010, 11:09AM BST.
A number of “summits” are to be held to give people the chance to help shape Shropshire Council spending plans. The meetings will be attended by the whole Shirehall cabinet.
And the Lib Dem opposition is calling for the setting up of an interactive web blog where members of the public can give examples of the council wasting money.
In a statement to the full council on Thursday, leader Keith Barrow says the council is “committed to actively engaging with local people, businesses and our own staff, to ensure that any decisions made reflect the priorities and concerns of our communities as a whole.”
He adds: “We are therefore planning a more comprehensive, extensive public engagement process than ever before.”
Councillor Barrow says this will enable the council to agree a “well informed” budget next February.
The first phase will begin immediately and involve cabinet members and senior officers listening to the views of people at local joint committee meetings. Consultation events will be held with stakeholder groups.
“Plans are being drawn up for a number of summits, attended by the whole cabinet, where people can hear about the challenges ahead, have their say, and make suggestions about areas for more efficiency in how we work,” says Councillor Barrow.
He wants to encourage people to challenge the council on whether it has thought “radically and creatively” enough about its future plans.
Lib Dem group leader Nigel Hartin is calling for it to put in place an interactive “waste minimisation” blog where people can nominate examples of waste or unnecessary spending within council services.
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Presumably this will be like most other ‘consultations’ by the council, where they will do what they want anyway. If some proposals happen to coincide with the public mood then so much the better.
I remember a councillor actually telling me once that sometimes the public didn’t understand “the wider picture” and needed to be guided along the right path, which I thought was astonishingly patronising. There hasn’t been much evidence as far as I can see that things have changed.
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a good start would be for the Council to..
not pay for Councillor’s to have internet & a pc at home & pay their phonebills.
the council to not just bin all their old office equipment like pc’s & monitors just getting skipped,when they could be auctioned off or donated.
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