Councillor walks out of Shropshire Council meeting ‘in disgust’
Thursday 15th September 2011, 6:30PM BST.
A leading Shropshire councillor walked out of a meeting ‘in disgust’ today, claiming that he had been silenced in his efforts to raise issues about the authority’s financial plans, staff morale and the prospect of strike action.
Labour group leader Alan Mosley left the enterprise and growth scrutiny panel meeting at Shirehall and claimed his comments had been ruled ‘out of order’ by chairman Councillor Steve Davenport.
But Councillor Davenport this afternoon said he had simply asked Councillor Mosley to stick to the items on the agenda, related to the issue of procurement.
Councillor Mosley said: “I walked out of the meeting in disgust. When I tried to discuss the impact of the cuts and the proposed strike and the morale of staff I was ruled out of order by the chairman.
“The only item was general procurement plans, rather than issues of highways, transport, employment and growth and the cuts taking place in them. So I was said to be out of order for speaking about the impact of disastrously low levels of staff morale.
“I saw little point in staying and walked out and expressed my view that the scrutiny panel and its role in holding the administration to account was being undermined.”
Councillor Davenport said: “All I asked him to do was stick to the agenda. I didn’t rule him out of order at all. He didn’t agree with what we were going through on the agenda, which was general procurement plans. Everybody else said it had been a good meeting.”
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Amazing isn’t it how peoples views change , i am sure we have a few who are sat at home going it was a bit different when one was wielding the axe 10 odd years ago.
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Good for councillor Moseley but in the finest political tradition it is probably too little too late.
What have the other councillors of all parties been doing to stop the rot that is manifest at the top of Shropshire Council?
Where is the support for the good of the county and the staff in the council?
Low tactics are being employed against both the staff and unions at the council, particularly on a personal level.
The wider public have no conception yet of the scale of the cuts to come but it can be gauged by the fact that future cuts of 20-25% across council services and staff are no secret within the council. This is what is to come on top of the drama playing out currently.
I know people will want detail but I can’t elaborate as it won’t be published here otherwise.
These are your services, speak to your councillor, ask what they are doing. Ask what the future of your services will look like.
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Well done Sir
It’s a putty other members don’t have the guts to stand up to the click who hand in hand now rule the council.
You will get my vote at the next election
Mike
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I agree. Well done for leaving the meeting.
Its a good thing that the chairman had the guts to stick to the agenda of the meeting. Its extremely unprofessional and downright rude to introduce completely unrelated topics at a business meeting. It can be difficult to get the right people together to discus something important and when someone tries to derail things to suite their own hidden agenda its extremely disruptive and unproductive.
You will not get my vote at the next election. If you want to have a meeting about something then schedule it and invite the right people. Simples.
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Well done Alan. It’s about time someone started raising the important issues in the council. Shame you were silenced.
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He’s not the only one to be silenced, it’s happening to staff. Marched out of Shirehall and dismissed for challenging the way the staff changes are being implemented. Rule by fear that’s what this council is about.
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This sounds very sinister.
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The modus operandi by the senior management is to rule by fear spin and misinformation. Good on this councillor for asking questions but too little too late I’m afraid. Dismissing someone for asking the questions her staff were too afraid to ask is outrageous. So many of us simply won’t ask questions because firstly we are never given answers to them, only fudging and spin and management speak, and secondly because we are truly afraid of being put on a black list.
It is a legitimate concern of staff that the senior management are seeking to share services with larger authorities, in effect they are prepared to submit to a takeover. You can guarantee that services won’t be based in the smaller council so our jobs if they still exist will move out of the county. Not acceptable and it really isn’t going to help service delivery.
I don’t even know how they can prove merging with other councils will save money, when they can’t tell us how much the services cost now.
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At last, a Labour councillor with some Labour credentials. One wonders what was the meeting discussion on ‘general procurement plans’. It must be an ‘open secret’ that the attack on workers salaries and conditions is a precursor to outsourcing (privatising) local services. Private employers, accountable to shareholders, will require these sorts of cuts in terms and conditions in order to maximise their profits. The word on the street is that first in line are IT services and Car Parks. It would interesting to discover who has a particular business interest in either of these services.
Joyce Brand
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Someone was marched out and dismissed for challenging the Council. Is this right??????
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Yes
The head of property services, just for asking questions from her staff
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By taking this action it just shows that the relevant Director has no respect for staffs concerns as to their futures. At the same time as the Chief Executive is stating that the pay cuts and changes to staff terms are necessary to prevent redundancies , the relevant Director is looking to outsource services which will inevitably mean staff losing jobs or being offered posts in adjoining Councils e.g.Cheshire or Herefordshire or to private companies not based in the county.However at the end of the day these Senior Managers have no loyalty to the staff or the residents of Shropshire but merely to their own CV which will show immediate financial reductions they have helped to achieve but they will have moved on before the repercussions are felt.
Why if these persons are considered competent on very high salaries do they need to keep appointing outside consultants.
The Directors actions will have no doubt prevented any other staff putting their heads above the parapet by questioning any of his proposed actions in any part of his directorship
and with him having no regard whatsoever to the Councils own adopted bullying policy.
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good on him
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is this the playground?
surely in a democracy you would stay and DEBATE and ARGUE your point?
I hope he is deducted one days pay for the day he didnt go to the meeting
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Sounds like Teddy has been well and truly thrown out of somebody’s pram
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toys out the pram?
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Well done, what would the council employees do without your support?
Will you be getting another increase in your allowances for this grand gesture?
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This smacks of macho posturing to me – it’s a shame that Mr Mosley hasn’t been spear-heading campaigns to stop cuts to day centres, schools etc as they have happened. Where has he been, what’s he been doing?
We need effective opposition in Shropshire and, to be fair, the Liberals have been very vocal over the school closures. The Labour Group has been surprisingly quiet.
Throwing a hissy fit at this stage is too little too late in my book…come on Alan, pull your finger out and make your iPad earn its keep…
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When does he walk back in???, lets be honest however labour have been oh so quiet on the cuts because they would have done the same. As for the lib/dems oh so pointless mp’s and the same goes for lib/dem councilors , lets face it , it took an ex tory Councillor to get the quarry paddling pool talked about and open for the last bit of summer where was the lib/dem Councillor???? in fact what has she done for her district and where has she been since the local elections
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