Dear Editor,
At last week’s full Council meeting we witnessed an irate Independent Leader attempt to hold his Labour partners to account, as they kicked-back over scrapping the Strategic Planning Board to save money.
He spectacularly failed!
Cllr Craig Browne (pictured) railed that his Group had sided with Labour (for yet another 4 years), because he didn’t trust the Conservative Group to deliver the Labour/Independent Budget.
But he was clearly furious that his Labour partners (despite voting for it last February), don’t seem all that keen on it either.
A Labour amendment to defer the decision for six months, until further details were available was clearly carried.
This was especially galling for Cllr Browne, because the proposal to cut a planning committee was approved by the Corporate Policy Committee, just a week before being recommended to Council.
The Chair is CEC Labour Leader, Sam Corcoran) and the Independent Leader, Cllr Craig Browne is vice-chair.
All Labour and Independent members at the Corporate Policy meeting voted in favour of the proposal.
At least the Conservative Group has been consistent.
We voted against the budget because we recognised inherent problems in many of the cost cutting and cost charging proposals, where business cases had not been adequately presented and where further consultation would be required.
These issues had still not been resolved at the time of the Corporate Policy Committee meeting and so again, we could not support it.
It seems paradoxical to reduce the number of planning committees from 3 to 2 when CEC still has a planning back-log and cost-savings appear to be minimal.
But equally paradoxical is a Labour-Independent administration that creates policies that expose the fragility of their partnership.
Yours,
Cllr Janet Clowes
Conservative Group Leader
Cheshire East Council
If this doesn’t show that the £500 allowance increase they awarded themselves is not deserved then I don’t know what does.