The local Guardian ran a colourful account of a colourful meeting, which undeniably faltered and stumbled. Blame? Pretty squarely at the door of the Community Chair. (That’s me.)
So what went wrong?
The new rules meant the team had to design and deliver a decision-making process which was legal, fair, and captured as accurately as possible the wishes of residents. Over the summer there had been numerous meetings and seminars as we argued over possible procedures, hoping to anticipate and pre-empt what might go wrong at every stage. Everyone in the CC team and the body of ward councillors was involved, and Patrick (Cllr Smith) worked particularly hard to work out the details, right down to detailed timings. We were still haggling over the “best” number of dots to hand out just a few days before.
That night, the turnout was significantly larger than expected, and the queue to get in meant we felt obliged to delay the start. Larger meetings move more slowly, and I became so concerned about the timings that I prevailed upon Patrick (against his better judgement) to let me make ad-hoc changes to the process. And that’s where what should have been a choreographed ballet became the proverbial hockey match. O yes, I wince as I recall the stumbles, as an overheated Community Chair tried to reinvent that carefully worked-out plan on the fly, while Sarah sat visibly grinning as she sharpened her pencil. What made it worse is that the councillors (particularly Patrick) did manage to retain both their composure and dignity, throwing my own fumbles into even sharper relief. The rest is history.
So, am I now mortified? Not at all, actually – I went home as cheerful as anyone there. For anyone who does care about our area, this was truly an exciting meeting. The buzz in the air as people debated and voted was simply electric. True, I “lost” the NewsRound and the (cherished) Community Forum, but in the end the councillors did make, and account for, qualified spending decisions in a calm and dignified way. The team had put real effort and commitment into a dififcult exercise, and, largely due to some poor judgement calls on my part, this meeting didn't go very well. From my own standpoint, it seems to me that if you’re not prepared to countenance clangers you’re not prepared to risk anything new, and our track record of experiment and innovation at WWCC is something we can be proud of. Some of what we do is much harder than it looks, and we can’t achieve improvements without taking a few risks. Chairing these meetings is certainly harder than I thought it would be: you have to balance commitment to the CC process against a justifiable expectation of advocacy, while remaining a “neutral” chair.
We’ll discuss and learn from the various problems last night – I certainly have a raft of notes. The CC teams work hard, and with real commitment, to improve what we are achieving. I guess I can anticipate quite a bit of teasing at the routine post-mortem, but the emphasis will be on serious analysis, to capture what has been learned .
Phil Herlihy
PS: Ouch!
Well, for a variety of external reasons, that was the worst chairing performance I've ever seen, let alone wanted to own up to.
The issue over the "Community Centre" bid was an interesting one. I'm glad it was recognised that I parried the official line in favour of allowing residents to kick up over this - in my view that's (part of) what the meetings are for. I've said before that chairing the meetings is a balance between support for the process, a "justifiable expectation of advocacy" and being a (reasonably) neutral chair. It should be obvious that no chair can fulfil any one of these conficting roles fully. I'm often accused (here) of being a stooge for the council so it's gladdening that someone notices when what I do becomes visible.
It's worth saying at the outset that I don't have a view myself over the Library. I recognise a need to restrain costs, but I can imagine the annoyance of losing a valued facility, especially if you now have to walk an extra mile. As is often the case, I'm more interested here in the process.
We also need to be clear about the complex reality of decision-making in WF. Decision-making power is concentrated in the cabinet. I recognise that this may be more efficient than a full-council system but I know many back-bench councillors feel they don't have sufficient influence on what happens (although the party groups set out their positions in advance of "official" meetings, and back- benchers have an opportunity to weigh in there, no doubt). I also note that Cabinet chose to reject the recommendation by Scrutiny to review the decision over St James st Library - not a good omen, I think (they should at least have gone through the motions of reconsidering, even if the outcome turned out the same). What is Scrutiny for?
Community Councils are a valuable input to decision-making but even their most positive supporter (could well be me) would have to concede that the meeting participants are self-selecting and are patently not comprehensively representative (despite valiant attempts to address this by the team and even myself). Nevertheless, they are an important and valuable component of participative decision- making. They don't, in my view, provide a separate "channel" into decision making (which is why the Cabinet Champion role doesn't really achieve anything, even though our own appointee is capable and helpful). Community Councils provide a public, visible forum in which residents can communicate with key officers and their elected ward councillors, and those councillors do have a responsibility to balance views expressed in these meetings with their understanding of the needs of their wider constituencies. They are also bound by various legislation, rules and policies which already exist - the rejection of the Town Square benches was one casualty of one such policy. I'd like to feel that back-bench councillors had more clout, without necessarily ditching the cabinet system (and I believe that Community Councils can help with this too) - otherwise the cabinet could be seen as a remote elite, accountable only every four years.
Anyway - back to the Community Centre bid. I've asked to see a copy of the original bid, and as I'd been repeatedly assured by the support officers, it does not mention St. James St Library. I fully recognise that many people were convinced that it did, but the name of that building does not appear in the bid. It may be that the bid was "widened" at the time that the form was filled in, but I wouldn't believe for an instant that it had been doctored subsequently. All bids were assessed for feasibility by the CC team, conferring with colleagues in relevant departments and with interested ward councillors, and the Scout Hut emerged as a possible location after very wide discussion. My guess is (for what it's worth) that the library was never seriously considered as a base for the proposed community faciities because the long-term economics of keeping the building in public use had already led to the decision to close the library and no amount of further study seemed likely to change that assessment. (That's just guesswork - I'm not particularly well- briefed on the issues surrounding the library.) So, adapting the bid to look at the Scout Hut could be seen as a positive interpretation of the proposer's intention, rather than allowing the bid to be further strokes of the whip on what looks increasingly like a dead horse.
I've gone on at length over all this as I think it's a complex situation. I do think it was valuable to allow residents to pin up a "pirate" bid and then vote for it - and it really did put pressure on our councillors to account for their decisions. I happen to think that out of the muddle on the 6th we did actually see a new level of accountability from councillors. Decisions were made which did not, for once, simply rubber-stamp the residents' voting, and serious and measured attempts were made to explain why, under quite hostile conditions. I've always seen Community Councils as a two-way exchange, and as I've said elsewhere I thought this was done calmly, with real dignity and with respect for those attendees who weren't yelling their heads off.
I have pressing personal preoccupations at the moment which mean it's unlikely that I'll have time to pontificate further on all this, but I wanted to set the record straight about the content of the written bid, in particular. I'd also like to reiterate my conviction that these meetings will achieve far more if we can retain mutual respect for everyone there, and an appreciation of the goodwill and commitment to improvement that exists more widely than some commentators understand.
Phil