Suffolk County Council Cabinet to receive "training on dealing with the public"

Ann Kerr, Stradbroke Parish Council Chairman
Addressing the library public meeting

It was revealed last night by Ann Kerr, Chairman of Stradbroke Parish Council that in response to a complaint against a cabinet member for repeatedly ignoring correspondence the County Council Standards Committee had ordered all of the cabinet to undergo training.

The decision notice orders that the Deputy Monitoring officer:

After the Annual General Meeting of the CC on 26th May 2011 he arrange for members of the Cabinet to receive training on: how to manage correspondence with and interact with members of the public wishing to air grievances about the Council's policies; the efficacy of an appropriate and timely apology in preventing members of the public feeling the need to complain about a councillor's conduct.

The results of the training are to be passed to all councillors and a review take place after three months.

As I understand this follows a number of similar complaints against cabinet members I will not name the cabinet member this particular complaint relates to. It seems incredible that such senior councillors need this kind of training. Isn't it common sense that ignoring correspondence and refusing to apologise when there is a good reason to is likely to lead to formal complaints?

Whilst I welcome the decision of the Standards Committee it concerns me that this training will be paid for at public expense and I would suggest that cabinet members are asked to pay for it themselves.

NOTE: All elected councillors at Suffolk CC get paid a basic allowance of £10 172 a year and cabinet members an extra £15 253 making a total of £25 424 a year. The Leader and Deputy Leader get more see the member's allowance scheme

Suffolk County Council U-Turn on Library FOI Request

Back in February I served a Freedom of Information request on Suffolk County Council asking for the full consultation responses at the end of the library consultation. The consultation finally ended on 30th April 2011. Back in March I got a response that stated:

This information will be published in July 2011, after cabinet have met. Having also considered the public interest the Council’s decision is, therefore, to withhold the information requested at this time. The Council has determined that it is not in the public interest to release this information before cabinet has met.

I appealed against this as I considered this response unlawful and after a lot of difficulty finally an internal review was carried out by the Chief Information Office which upheld the council's position (hardly surprisingly).

I then appealed to the Information Commissioner and this appeal was still ongoing until Friday. But what changed things seemed to be a combination of me asking Cllr Judy Terry on camera about it and the election of Mark Bee as Leader of Suffolk County Council.

On Friday just as I was arriving at the election count and hearing the news that Andrea Hill was on "gardening leave" I got an email from Suffolk County Council backing down on this issue and agreeing to release the consultation responses before cabinet in July (with the cabinet papers).

This is a significant climbdown from the ridiculous position that the County Council were holding of releasing the results of the consultation after the decision had been made. It almost made up for loosing in the elections :-)

Andy Burnham's Twitter Challenge to Lib Dem MPs

Andy Burnham MP
Shadow Education Secretary

In the wake of last Thursday's elections Ed Miliband is calling on Lib Dem ministers to quit the cabinet. This sounds unlikely at this stage anyway but he is also calling on "disaffected Lib Dems should stand with him to oppose Tory policies". This sounds a bit more likely but this morning much of the attention has been on health with Nick Clegg threatening to veto the NHS reforms.

At the same time Shadow Education Secretary Andy Burnham is calling on Lib Dem MPs via Twitter to vote for changes to the education bill when it is debated on Wednesday

@andyburnhammp: Asking Lib Dems to vote for 1. fair admissions 2. qualified teachers in schools 3. 'face-to-face' careers advice #edbill

I would certainly agree with all three of these things and I hope it is just the 160 letter limit on Twitter preventing him for asking for more changes. Let's list a few more:

• Return to three year budgets for schools to allow good financial management and planning
• Restoration of decent capital budgets slashed by 60% or more leaving small primaries with virtually non-existent capital budgets and bigger schools with insufficient funds
• Some limitations on the Free Schools programme to prevent the kind of mess we are seeing with unplanned and uncontrolled free schools causing local chaos. The impact on local schools must be considered bizarrely if I applied to open a new supermarket such local impact would be as part of planning rules
• Some limitation on academy conversion to stop schools becoming academies to undermine sensible local re-organisation (see the mess in Suffolk with Middle Schools converting to academies)
• A continued role for local education authorities who are better placed to make strategic decisions on schools than the DfE in Westminster - I say this fully supporting autonomy for local schools and have many times written about what a mess our local Suffolk education authority is...
• Teacher's pensions need sorting out in a way that is fair to all.

I have been disappointed with the lack of any apparent influence by the Lib Dems over coalition education policy - with the exception of the pupil premium but even that is set so low and using such a blunt instrument (free school meals) as to be next to useless. 

We have seen tuition fees in universities trebled and in schools budgets cut and the usual ideological focus on particular ways to teach reading, history and even talk now of a list of what books primary school children should read. 

That and yet another education secretary - Michael Gove - who has no real world experience or knowledge of education. He reminds me of the kind of computer user IT professionals most dread - he just knows enough to mess things up.

At least Labour funded schools adequately. Their constant meddling was annoying but could in practice be ignored. What we have now is meddling but not the funds we need. Funded properly most schools can run themselves (with the appropriate support). 

I very much hope that the Lib Dems will now put a break on this. 

Health is an important issue of course but education is in danger of being ignored. Maybe because on the ground we are all so busy just fighting to survive....