Thanet District Council and the balance of power

After reading some of the comment on yesterdays press release http://thanetpress.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/statement-from-cllr-ian-driver-current.html I realised that some blog readers are even more confused about the issue of Cllr Driver and his call for the resignation of the Chairman of the council.

At the moment we have 56 councillors and an almost equal balance of power if it was balanced this would be half on each side i.e. 28 all on vote.

We have 26 Labour Councillors.

We have 3 Thanet independent group, TIG councillors, who usually vote with Labour.

This normally means that 29 councillors vote Labour.

We have 23 Conservative Councillors.

We have 2 Independent Councillors (Gregory and Ezekiel)

We have 2 Independent group councillors.

These three groups pretty much always vote Conservative.

This normally means that 27 councillors vote Conservative.

As you can see this means that if Cllr Driver – as happened the other day – votes with the Conservative group instead of the Labour group we have a dead heat, 28 votes for and 28 votes against.

The chairman of the council who has already voted – in this case as part of the Labour group then gets the opportunity to cast a deciding vote i.e. vote again.

I guess now it understandable what Cllr Driver is unhappy about here, it is one thing voting as a member of a political group and perfectly reasonable to vote with that group, the problem arises when the chairman votes again as chairman.

Cllr Driver has now written to the district auditor about this, here is the email:

“Sent: Mon, 17 Dec 2012 21:05
Subject: Pleasurama Letter to District Auditor

Dear ****** 

Thank you for your e-mail.

You may be aware that at the last meeting of Thanet Council on 6 December the Chairman Cllr Clark used his casting vote to prevent the proposed new development agreement with SFP Ventures (UK) Ltd from being discussed and voted on at a meeting of full Council. Instead, any decision will be made by a single cabinet member with officer advice.

I wrote to the Thanet Gazette about this issue and my letter was published on Friday last. I have since issued a statement about this. I attach copies of both documents

I am very concerned that in spite of strong public and political interest the Council's ruling Labour Group and members of my own Thanet Independent Group appear to be determined to have this extremely important issue decided upon in a secret meeting with a single Councillor decision maker.

When the Audit Commission reported on its investigation into the management of the Royal Sands/ Pleasurama project in 2005, one of the major areas of concern was that the disposal process should be as accountable and transparent as possible in order to demonstrate to the public that value for money was being achieved by the Council.

I am sorry to say that to approve a new development agreement with SFP Ventures (UK) Ltd in the way in which it now appears the decision will be made, runs contrary to Audit Commission Advice. Furthermore, the fact that this decision was made on the casting vote of the Council Chairman raises worries in my mind.

I assume that the relevant officers of the Council advised the Chairman of the sensitivity of the decision including the views of the Audit Commission.

I hope that it may be possible, in the light of the many concerns surrounding the governance of this matter, for the decision in relation to the approval of the proposed new Royal Sands development agreement to be reconsidered.

Yours sincerely

Councillor Ian Driver

Chairman of the OSP”

Now my take on what Cllr Driver is doing, is that he is doing what pretty much everyone I speak to locally says they want their councillors to do, i.e. attempting to represent the wishes of the majority of local people.

This then raises the issue of TIG, especially the question of why the other two members of the group don’t appear to acting as independents, but seem to be pretty much exclusively supporting the Labour group.

I don’t think it can be because they hope to be re-elected, as if they hope to be elected as independents, then they would need to act independently, perhaps they are hoping to be selected as Labour candidates in the next local elections, however this would seem unlikely.    

 

Sorry I digress, an interesting thought here is in the case of a vote of no confidence in the chair, does the chair get to vote and if so how many times?


I will carry on with this post as I get time today.