Barham Park has been the subject of a lengthy blog by Philip Grant on Wembley Matters. Without wishing to pick on anyone, I think it worth looking at in detail as it illustrates many of the confusions about local government debates that create unnecessary heat.
Member and Officer Roles
One of the key confusions is between the roles of members and officers. The elected members (councillors) determine the policy of the Council in committee. The reports that committee considers is a set of recommendation by Council officers, based on their professional expertise. Therefore the suggestion that there is a split where the officers are forcing the councillors to make a decision is wrong, and cannot be right. When councillors feel they are being "forced" into a decision that usually means that they cannot think of an argument why the officer recommendation is wrong. To me, that seems more likely councillors failing to engage intellectually.
Essentially, the role of officers is to give information and advice on technocratic questions like cost, legality, feasibility and so on. The councillors are supposed to make value judgements. For instance how much weight should be given to retaining community space compared to bringing it into use for another purpose, for example?
The odd thing about Mr Grant's post is that he explicitly refers to officers being overruled by councillors in an earlier planning decision, but seems to feel that councillors were "forced" to follow advice at a meeting of the Barham Trust where the councillors decided to appeal the planning refusal.
The Barham Park Trust
The five members of the Barham Park Trust could have overruled the officers in exactly the same way as the Planning Committee. They interpreted their role as trustee as appealing the planning refusal, which is entirely in line with the earlier decision to rent out the property to ACAVA. The Council officers are simply implementing the decision that the councillors have made. They would be professionally remiss, and probably sackable, if they did anything else.
Incidentally, I dislike the way that Mr Grant names specific officers and accuses them of particular forms of misconduct. Not only have none of these officers committed any misconduct, by convention they cannot answer back to such accusations. To make personal criticisms of named individuals when they cannot answer back violates the principles of basic fairness.
What is the Agenda Here?
I am now going into speculation about motives, which is risky as I think Mr Grant demonstrates. I don't think his speculations about various peoples' motivations make sense, and in speculating on other peoples' motives I risk the same problem. However, here goes.
This whole row has essentially been whipped up by Cllr Paul Lorber, who seems to me to have two motivations. One is party political. He wants to whip up controversy ahead of the election on 22 May as he thinks that may benefit his party. That is perhaps understandable. The second relates to his position as one of the bidders in the original tendering process. Despite his best efforts to muscle in on the committee's decision, Cllr Lorber's bid was considered on the same basis as everyone else. I was on the Committee and it was obvious to me that Cllr Lorber's bid was markedly inferior to that of ACAVA. I believe that Cllr Lorber's second motivation for seeking to use legal and planning objections to block the new tenant is down to a combination of sour grapes and an attempt to use the planning process to secure a tenancy when a decision was made not to give him one.
No comments:
Post a Comment