I suppose you can forgive their giddy enthusiasm but are Nottingham's inner circle of politicians getting a little ahead of themselves?
Full council meets today for the first time since the election. Early on in the agenda is the election of the leader who has the gift of appointments to the executive/portfolio holders in her/his power. Somewhat helpfully, JoCo has already written a report "...in the event that [he is] elected as Leader of the Council..." setting out who will be his chosen few. It's listed as a 'report from the Leader'. Even though he isn't the Leader yet. But he should be by the time the relevant agenda item comes up so I suppose that's alright then.
Mind you a couple of these prospective portfolio holders have also been making hay before the sun's even out of bed. Graham Chapman has already signed off three portfolio holder decisions, one of which involves expenditure of £270k, and 'Calamity' Jane Urquhart has done one. Surely, technically these can't be valid because the councillors concerned were not portfolio holders at the time of signing?
Monday, 23 May 2011
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5 comments:
Civics stay on until a new one is appointed, maybe the same applies to portfolio holders?
Did wonder about that but does that mean Hassan Ahmed and Katrina Bull are still portfolio holders?
Civics are ceremonial posts but it would be a different kettle of fish for a non-elected person to keep an executive position.
I suspect that with an increased majority and no effective opposition (or even less than they had before, such as it was), Jo Co and his gang don't give a monkeys about proper procedure or the law.
If they were bad before, they're going to be whole lot worse now.
In reality it had no practical effect because they all knew what posts they were gonna get. I suppose what annoys is that they could've left off publishing the decisions for a few days after full council. You know, for the look of the thing.
I would like to point out that anyone wanting to make a complaint does so through the local authority complaints department. Ranting at a Councilor only defuses any future complaint as they, the councilors will if it is deemed a sensitive issue or likely to blow up in their faces, will do something to save face and stop an official complaint. This is one of the reasons why NCC has fewer complaints than they actually do get.
So all your complaints if you make one, look up the complaints procedure and stop using your councilor, your doing NCC a favor for when the audit commission looks at the complaints being made.
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