System would rob us of a voice

The leader of Canterbury City Council wants to bring back the discredited ‘Leader and Executive’ system for conducting council business. There are many examples from the recent past illustrating why it is discredited. The notorious Westgate traffic trial is the most obvious. They are examples of ill-thoughtout decisions, made in haste, from which the Executive was reluctant to back down because it included no dissident voices. The Executive in its previous incarnation was also, however, prone to the opposite defect.

It was much too slow to take action on some key issues.

It was composed of a small unrepresentative group of councillors and was, as a result, blind to important problems, because Executive members had no direct experience of them. A classic case was the huge growth in the number of HMOS in certain areas of Canterbury. The Executive was composed overwhelmingly of councillors from outside the city. Consequently, when Canterbury residents urged the council to take action and limit numbers of HMOS in order to preserve balanced communities, the Executive simply failed to grasp the nature of the problem. It wasn’t until the Executive system was replaced by the Committee system that we got effective action with the introduction of the Article 4 Direction.

The council leader has now abolished the Canterbury Forum, along with the other Area Forums. In doing so, he has diminished the opportunity for Canterbury people to make their concerns known. If he succeeds in bringing back the Executive system, all the important decisions will be made by a small group chosen by himself. The likely result will be that Canterbury city residents will have no one to represent them in the making of decisions about their community. Their voices will go unheard. Richard Norman St Michael’s Place, Canterbury

■ Last week we elected new members to the Canterbury City Council. So it is surprising that the leader of the council has just announced that he wants to do away with the Committee system and replace it with a small, cabinet-style Executive.

The change would mean that instead of all the councillors having a say in city council decisions, only a small proportion will make the main decisions and the rest will be side-lined. This seems like a slap in the face for our new councillors, for the voters and for democracy.

The Campaign for Democracy in the Canterbury District has already launched a petition to protest about the proposed change: to sign the petition go to the Canterbury City Council website.

Jan Pahl CBE D.litt St Dunstan’s Terrace, Canterbury

■ Please correct the article on page 16 of your edition [‘Opposition to cabinet system’, Gazette, May 6].

The reason that the Alliance of Canterbury Residents’ Associations (ACRA) was established in 2013 was a natural progression to bring together two groups of residents associations - The Southern Canterbury Alliance and the North Canterbury Forum.

It was not, as your article states, in order to mount a campaign for the abolition of the cabinet system. There has clearly been some acronym confusion. I believe the group that you intended to mention is CDCD Campaign for Democracy in the Canterbury District, which has initiated the current petition and was behind the 2013 campaign. David Kemsley Alliance of Canterbury Residents’ Associations (ACRA)