Islanders are aware there is change underway at the Isle of Wight council.
Here at OnTheWight feel positive about contributing where we can to help achieve positive change on the Island and we hope readers feel the same.
OnTheWight: Founded on openness
As readers of OnTheWight know, one of our founding principles is openness – a desire to inform and involve the people of the Island. Now, at this point of change at the council there is a great opportunity to bring this openness to the council, something we feel that’s been missing for many years.
People that OnTheWight has spoken to in differing groups recognise the changes bubbling at County Hall. This was clearly felt in the Council Chamber at the first Full Council meeting last week – across the elected groups the atmosphere was much lighter. A indication of the potential of co-operation.
Change is underway
There are early signs of change in the way the new council is doing business in other areas.
We know that we’re not alone in our sincere hope that the Independents, now in charge, will spread this throughout the organisation.
For this to be executed, the Officers of the council need to embrace the changes, as do the heads of departments and directors. Many council officers that we’ve spoken to are really good people, wanting to do the best for the Island they serve, so are likely to be willing participants.
Past ‘bunker’ mentality
OnTheWight (under our previous VentnorBlog name) has been campaigning for years for the council to open up more.
We met a resistance and as successive bad news stories built – eg closure of public toilets, failure to open Cowes Enterprise college, the collapse of high school performance – it grew to what many people described to us, in and out of County Hall, as a ‘bunker mentality’. A near paranoia.
Opening up the process of governance
Clearly there are many different areas where opening up could be achieved. Let’s start with an obvious one – council meetings.
One of the reasons that we started doing live reporting from council meetings, way back in 2007, was a desire to let the people of the Island (and those who had moved abroad) know about what was happening at the council. To help Islanders understand the decisions that were being made in the council chamber by their elected representatives, on their behalf.
It’s been a struggle in the past
In the past this has taken a fair degree of negotiation to achieve this. One small example – OnTheWight has to, before each and every Full Council meeting, make a written request to the Chair of the council to record the meeting.
It’s our understanding that some officers tried to stop this happening. The compromise reached was that we could record the meeting, but only for our internal uses, as long as they weren’t made available publicly through OnTheWight.
To their credit, none of the Chairs, no matter which group they were in, have refused this, but why should a meeting that is open to the public not be shared as widely?
Why not stream council meetings live online?
Indeed, why not make them publicly accessible, live, as they happen over the Internet. Audio at a minimum, or preferably Video too. These days, the costs of doing this are not the barrier.
Your ideas
As you can see, we’re really hopeful that those now in charge at the council will bring about positive change.
What would you like to see made more open there?
