Council’s surprising self-doubt proves something of a triumph The city leader who never was!
THERE were audible gasps at the city council’s meeting this week when Conservative councillor and procedural stickler Matt Bennett pointed out that they had forgotten to officially elect the council leader at the annual meeting in May.
The election is a mundane formality, a rubber stamp following the local elections and private group meetings of the ruling Labour group of councillors. So it is easy to see how ‘during the euphoria of appointing the Lord Mayor’ it was over looked.
But it appears that Labour councillor Ian Ward has been an unofficial leader for the last three weeks, much to the surprise of all concerned.
Cllr Bennett wondered if the leader had signed off anything which could be legally challenged given his informal status.
But to the rescue rode city solicitor Kate Charlton, who announced that Cllr Ward had made no decisions in the last three weeks.
This was greeted with howls of laughter around the Chamber and one wag on the opposition benches shouted ‘then what do we need him for’?
Aside from having to live down the embarrassment of both having been forgotten and done nothing of note in the last month, Cllr Ward has, of course, taken one decision – to appoint a cabinet. Were these nine individuals and their decisions unofficial too? wonderful sentence too: “Procurement and go live of replacement ACD, IVR and Workforce management solutions to include omni-channel solution, allowing staff in the contact centre to deal with web, social media and telephone enquiries.”
Bearing in mind that some councillors think mobile phones are magic (or at least behave like they do) officials might want to extend the Plain English policy to internal reports as well as the website.