The Horsell's Mouth Politics, pedantry and personal interests

Firstly, it’s good to see that Ann-Marie Barker’s nomination as my Lib Dem opponent in Horsell West is now official (unlike her, I am happy to afford my opponent the courtesy of using her name!). Richard Sanderson has left big shoes for whoever replaces him to fill and I look forward to a good-tempered if hard-fought final six weeks.

I’m also glad to note that she’s been reading my blog judging by her comments on Community Question Time and I’m delighted to discover that she’s in agreement with me over developing and expanding the Community Question Time into something more meaningful:

The funny thing is a local Conservative [that's me by the way - Simon!] is now suggesting that a quarterly or twice yearly event that moves around the borough would be a good idea. It’s a great idea and one that was put in place under the theme ‘Tune In’ through a local Liberal Democrat initiative.

Let’s make one thing clear – Tune In was never given a budget to do anything. So its travelling around the borough raising residents’ expectations of what might be achieved was a particular exercise in futility and one that as a journalist and then a press officer at a participating local authority I looked upon on in amazement. The only thing that Tune In was able to do was shift money from one budget heading to another and push some things further up the work programme.

The idea that “working in partnership” is the answer to everything needs to be challenged. Partnership working can be a useful tool in some regards but having six different organisations trying to make decisions together is seldom successful. Very rarely do they truly gel as one “partnership” and the individual interests – usually budgetary – almost always prevail. What you need is the right balance between operational matters that are best worked on together with the support of the community and those that really should be left to one organisation and its professionals to deal with.

My idea of a Community Question Time separates the democratic elements of community dialogue and council accountability from the bureaucratic rhetoric of partnerships and any false expectations of delivery. The views of residents should be constantly expressed at every level by members and every single year, voters have the chance to show their feelings at the ballot box. They are entitled to ask the questions in public that will give them the information they need to inform their vote. I believe that few are interested in how well various slices of local government are working together or not – so long as the outcomes are there.

I agree with Ann-Marie that Tune In was meant to be much more but I believe the only way to achieve it is by little steps. The idea of Question Time standing alone is meant to be that first step - it is distinctly not trying to emulate the flawed Tune In model.