Audit Commission view on County Council
Cabinet discussed the recent Audit Commission report on Durham County Council at its meeting this morning. It brough forth ‘lively debate’.
Labour are, of course, celebrating the Council receiving a 4-star rating, but as usual the report resembles somewhat the curate’s egg.
There is a lot of well-deserved praise for the work that officers do in managing services and financial management is clearly good.
There are a number of criticisms, however. One relates to the County Council role in economic develpoment which is seen as being not strategiaclly well-developed.
The main brick-bats are given to councillors and particularly the council leadership.
The report states that “there are significant weaknesses in the political leadership provided by the Leader of Council and the Cabinet”, and that “strategic community leadership [by councillors] is inconsistent”.
It also states that the role of scrutiny is not well-developed and that the cabinet members are not held properly to account for their portfolios.
This last comment does not surprise me one bit. Indeed, the holding-to-account role of scrutiny is practically a joke at County Hall as all the key decisions are actually taken by the Labour Group. This means that even when something does come up for discussion the Labour members follow the party whip, do not ask the awkward and challenging questions and don’t rock the boat, however hard we in the opposition try.
Let’s hope we are there in much larger numbers after 1 May as it will then be much harder for them to treat the process with such contempt.
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