Thanet District Council ups and downs.

I have just put the last weeks planning applications on to the Thanet Press Release Blog at http://thanetpress.blogspot.com/ I next went to put up the recent documents published by the council but there whole document database seems to have gone down see http://tdc-mg-dmz.thanet.gov.uk/ieDocHome.aspx?bcr=1 not a promising start to the bit of the day when I do such chores.

After yesterdays post where I was pretty critical of the council’s IT and noticing several other blogs had negative things to say about the council, I thought I would delve around for something positive to say.

The first thing is that they have managed to get their magazine “Thanet Matters” online without any noticeable errors see http://www.thanet.gov.uk/files/TDC_Thanet_Matters_Issue46.pdf it’s only available as a pdf file, something that’s a bit annoying for people with older computers, but at least unlike last time it is all legible.

Also the council have also announced that they intend to webcast the council meeting of 22nd April, something that I strongly support as it is a move to more accessible and open government, see http://www.thanet.gov.uk/council_meeting_video.aspx oddly enough they are promoting the council’s youtube channel on the same page.

This is a bit strange as they haven added any videos to it for about a year, I wonder if they are still making videos but just not putting them up, one would have thought at least one of last years big event would have appeared by now.

Next week should be an interesting one for the council, as I gather that the Conservative group are to select a new leader, I always find it interesting that the cabinet appears to select the leader and the leader appears to select the cabinet.

What the council needs for a leader is a well educated person with experience of running a large organisation, preferably at the peak of their career, unfortunately the position doesn’t attract a salary that would allow this type of person to give up their job for three years to do the job, full time.

I am hoping that the compromise of selecting a deputy leader from the best of the available talent within the conservative group will be adopted, this is not a full time job and I would say that it is the person who gets this job that could really make the difference.

I would also say that it is the selection of this post that is most likely to have some effect on the way the local Conservative groups show their intent to improve their act and could ultimately effect the general election result in in the marginal Thanet South constituency.

With the council although it is obvious that it should run well and efficiently, I think it is also very important that it should be perceived to do so and I would say at the moment this is not the case.

What is needed from the Cabinet is a firm hand, so that the council is achieving what we the council taxpayers want and not just what the officers think is best for us, we also need a leadership that can face up to past mistakes admit and resolve them.

Update I have now managed to access the newly published documents, although don’t hold your breath as the documents part of the council’s website is crawling.

Oddly enough some more documents have appeared since I published the new documents last week, that predate the ones I published last week in terms of their publication date.

By this I mean that although the council published documents for the 16th and 17th last week then since then have added more documents for the 16th and 17th which makes it a bit confusing.

Picture. Opening of St Laurence war memorial 1919.