At last night’s full council meeting, some councillors were left feeling pretty aggrieved when they were told the time limit in which they could question Cabinet member, George Brown, had run out.
We understand that according to the constitution, councillors can ask questions of each Cabinet member, but only within the allotted time limit.
As the chair of the meeting called questioning of George Brown to an end, there were several groans of discontent from the chamber.
Councillor for Brading, St Helens and Bembridge, Cllr Jonathan Bacon, kindly sent through the question that he’d hoped to put to Cllr Brown last night.
He told us, “This is the question I wished to ask of George Brown but was unable to do so because of his unduly lengthy speech in response to an earlier question.”
Shouldn’t library closure programme be halted?
Cllr Bacon had planned to say, “We are currently in a situation when some libraries have until the end of June to determine if they will stay open.
“Even with such a short time scale the Bembridge library group only received an indication for the first time yesterday (Tuesday) that TUPE problems might be resolved and the Parish Council only had first sight of a draft lease for the premises yesterday (Tuesday) late afternoon. Now we learn that, as I predicted back in February, a Judicial Review of the closures has been launched.
“In all the circumstances shouldn’t the current closure programme be halted and instead either an open collaborative process be followed – such as that in Buckinghamshire where a two year dialogue was followed to determine how community libraries might operate – or even better the valuable and valued library service we had be reinstated, which the Independent Group showed is perfectly possible.”
Cllr Bacon suggested VB readers may wish to debate the subject instead, given that councillors weren’t afforded that luxury last night.
