‘What do the council members actually do?’

CAN someone please tell me why we in Leek need the Town Council we have, with as many as 12 people elected to it and as much as £62,000 spent on staffing and office costs? It’s only really a parish council, after all.

It’s hard to see what those elected folk actually do: the Town Council’s website is singularly lacking in detail.

Minutes of the periodic meetings are particularly scarce: the last Council minutes date from last May, 7 months ago; the latest Planning Committee minutes we are allowed to see are from last March though there is – note this – a report dated April 2011 still labelled “hot” about the then-proposed Town Centre Highway Improvements, the abolition of the roundabout. Can that still be a matter of recent or urgent news?

Those 12 members are elected for four-year terms and seem to go on for ever and ever.

I’ve never been asked by any of them whether I’m happy with the way it oversees the town’s allotments, our war memorials, the Christmas lights, town centre events.

What do these 12 actually do all the time? Attend meetings, by all accounts, when they aren’t, many of them, at SMDC or County Council meetings, since many sit on all three.

Yes, there is an agenda for the November meeting, last month.

It contains the following items Apologies; the receipt of minutes from the previous council meeting and two committees, and “Mayor’s correspondence/announcements/ report”.

The agenda tells the reader that these minutes are attached: not on the website they aren’t.

And the edition of the Post & Times on December 20 printed a ‘newsletter’ from the Town Mayor.

I was glad to read that he is having a busy year. But what is he actually doing? From what he said, attending other people’s events. That’s not much of a task for a grown man!

All this just makes me wonder what these 12 members and their office staff do. I wonder if there isn’t a better way of delivering and overseeing the tasks the Town Council has taken to itself. I also wonder when one of the councillors might knock on my door and ask for my opinion on anything relevant, let alone tell me why I should vote for them.

I look forward to reading their response. Peter Abbitt Leek