LETTER: CEC delays in addressing LGA peer review

Dear Editor,
The LGA Corporate Peer Review last March was crystal clear that the current committee system is not fit for purpose; with its silo-working, too many committees, too many reports, not enough financial control, no effective scrutiny of decision-making and that change was needed at pace.

We’ve already waited over six months, but the Labour-Independent administration have not even started to address this pivotal recommendation.

Consequently, the Conservative Group submitted their NoM in good time, exactly as we did in December 2023 when we submitted the NoM to get the LGA to conduct the review, when it was all too clear that CEC was in dire straits.

Caught on the back foot, Labour rushed to submit their own!

Not surprisingly, the two NoMs are similar and despite Labour’s account, at the Group Leader’s meeting with the CEX the week before council, I agreed that corporate policy committee conduct the report and Cllr Mannion agreed that our March date was more realistic.

These changes were reflected in a proposed joint NoM forwarded to us both by Cllr Gorman on 14th October.

We therefore modified our NoM on the day, (interestingly, Labour did not).

However, we could not agree to yet another councillor navel-gazing exercise to identify the problems with the committee system.

Members have done that repeatedly at previous council meetings and of course, the peer reviewers met with significant numbers of cross-party members in March to identify exactly what the problems are.

This simply introduces yet more unnecessary delay.

As for the rest, it is no more than political hubris and an administration ‘face-saving” exercise, as they have been forced to recognise once again, that they have arrived late to their own “Peer Review Action Party!”

Yours,

Cllr Janet Clowes
Conservative Group Leader
Cheshire East Council