Southwarn News editorial 26 June 2014…

“Only in politics could you have someone take up a new position, only to pronounce that it was pretty much a waste of time.

And the comments by the new chair of the council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee (OSC) are so far off the mark you have to wonder how or why he was handed the job in the first place.

For many years, council assembly was a proper debating chamber, where the key issues of the day were hammered out in front of the public and the press. This was then effectively neutered when the Lib Dem/Tory coalition moved decision making to Cabinet meetings.

You can argue that this led to less theatre, more proper decision-making but what it also did was remove the element of debate.

As such, the role of chair of the SOC became of paramount importance – and this paper argued consistently that it should always be occupied by a member of the opposition.

We argues this when there was no overall control of the council – how much more important is it when one party now enjoys a huge majority?

Cllr Gavin Edwards rightly declares that the public doesn’t care. That’s a problem he and his political colleagues should be addressing But he then goes on to suggest that ‘[people weren’t missing much’. That is only true if it doesn’t matter to them what decisions are made about their children’s education, the homes they will live in, the services and benefits they rely on and all that a local council does.

Cllr Edwards should at least be promising to hold his party to account in his new role – rather than rubbishing it. But in truth, the body that scrutinises these massively important decisions should not be controlled by a member of the party that is making them. The administration badly needs to think again.“

NB. The change to a cabinet