We’ve been going along to various council meetings for yonks now and one thing you can always be assured of, is that Cllr Lumley (the man of whom Charlotte Hofton said “Regarded by many IW Tories as rather more dangerous than Osama bin Laden”) will be there asking questions and challenging decisions.
He’s so reliable a challenger that you could almost set your watch by him.
So, we can rightly understand why he might be miffed about a certain claim in the Isle of Wight council Audit Report being presented to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee tonight.
It states …
Councillors’ challenge on under-performance at Cabinet meetings has been weak.
Up to the March 2010 Cabinet meeting there were no recommendations made to officers to improve under-performance and staff report that they do not get any feedback from Cabinet meetings on performance issues. Performance reporting to Cabinet is being improved but it is too early to assess the full impact.
Cllr Lumley’s response
Cllr Lumley tells us that he has been attending Cabinet meeting for some five years.
In all that time, he says that members have never opted to speak to him about a real opposition view of how this Council performs; not even when he chaired the Scrutiny Committee from 2006-2007, when performance management was covered by the Audit Committee.
He went on to say that he was particularly offended by the comment highlighted above.
“I regularly attend Cabinet meetings”
“I regularly attend Cabinet meetings – often as the only opposition councillor – and I ask scrutiny and political questions regarding the quarterly performance reports. These are rarely allowed to be minuted accurately by the clerks and my concerns are always disregarded as some sort of inconvenience the Cabinet have to bear. Not once have the Cabinet considered anything I have said worthy of consideration as a recommendation.”
We hope to go along to the meeting tonight, so should be able to report back on what happens.
More to come on other parts of the Audit Report later today.
Image: Amy McTigue under CC BY-ND 2.0
