SOME NOT-SO INDEPENDENTS

councillors throughout 2017.

It was only towards the end of 2017 that the Conservatives finally agreed to Labour demands for an independent review, reporting within three months on the culture at Cheshire East Council.

In 2020 a review by the independent Local Government Association found that ‘remarkable progress that has been made in improving workforce culture in a relatively short space of time’.

Isn’t it great that instead of arguing over how rotten the council culture is (as we were in 2017), we are now arguing over who should take the credit for the improved council culture?

This shows how far the council culture has come since 2017 when the Conservatives were in charge.

But it’s not only in the way they treat others that the Conservatives show themselves to be the

Nasty Party; it’s also in the way they treat their fellow Conservatives.

Coun Liz Wardlaw became deputy leader after Coun David Brown was (to use his words) ‘stepped down’ as deputy leader over allegations about an award of funding for a primary school car park.

The matter was referred to the police who found that there was no evidence to support the allegations.

Councillor Sam Corcoran

Leader of Cheshire East Council

I WAS interested to read the Labour leader of Cheshire East Council (Sam Corcoran) state, ‘I am confident that over the four-year term, to which I have been elected, the vast majority of the

Labour Party manifesto commitments will be delivered despite the unwanted intervention of coronavirus’.

I would be even more interested to know the reaction of his Independent cabinet colleagues.

Have they committed themselves to the Labour Party policies? Have they told their backbenchers?

Or is it really the case that the residents who voted Independent need to know that if they voted for these Independent councillors they get Labour supporting ones instead?

Coun Jos Saunders, Poynton East and Pott Shrigley