Those who follow the Forward Plan of the Isle of Wight council will be interested to see the latest version has now been published.
As usual, items decided upon in the last month have been removed, with the document showing details of the Forward Plan for January to April 2012.
Why have undecided items been removed?
We were surprised, however, to see that two items which have yet to be decided upon, have also been removed, rather than just extend the date until it’s completed.
Namely, Newport Harbour Estate and The Future of Public Records on the IW.
“Is it due to law breaking allegations?”
As readers will know, the consideration and decision on ‘Newport Harbour Estate’ had to be deferred last week.
This followed allegations of “endemic law breaking” against the council over the matter (more on that to follow this week).
Against the Future of Public Records entry it states, “Awaiting further information from National Archive in order to identify final decision date”.
There must be a reasonable explanation
If there is to be a delay in receiving information, it would seem more logical to be setting a date further in the future rather than just removing the items, which is how things have been done previously.
We’re sure that there is a perfectly reasonable explanation and that this isn’t a case of the council trying to bury the items.
We’ll ask the council press office and update this article once we have a response.
Forward Plan
Items removed
Update 12.14 on 21.12.11: We received the following reply from the council in response to our queries. In their own words.
The Forward Plan only contains information about decisions which are due to be made in the next four months. This is standard within local government. If there is uncertainly over whether a decision can be made within that period, then it is removed and added at a later date.
Items can be removed for a number of reasons i.e. officers waiting for additional information from an outside body, further work required due to a change in circumstances etc.
The Future of Public Records on the IW – we are awaiting further information from National Archive, once we have received this information we will be able to identify a final decision date and the item will be added back on to the forward plan. Because the council is dealing with an outside body, there is no guarantee that the information will be received in time for the decision to be made in the next four months – hence the reason the item was temporarily removed from the plan.
Newport Harbour Estate – Decision deferred to a later date to be confirmed. A report needs to go before cabinet to make a final decision. However, there are only two scheduled Cabinet meetings within the four month window of the current Forward Plan (14 February and 3 April 2012). As the leader advised at Cabinet on 13 December, given the number of representations received, it was considered important to consider them all fully before any decision is made.
Therefore it was decided to defer consideration of the item until such matters had been looked at in more detail. A report will therefore return to Cabinet as soon as is reasonably possible. Once a date is set for it to go before Cabinet then the item can go back on the Forward Plan.
