Coun Brian Essex

Conservative leader

A HAPPY and prosperous New Year to all the residents of Rossendale.

The Conservative councillors will continue to work hard for all residents so that they receive the best possible services across Rossendale.

We will work with all our fellow councillors to enable this to happen but will continue to challenge the leader of the council where we think she is wrong. We will do so firmly but with due respect.

Openness and

transparency should be the basis of the relationship between the residents and electors of Rossendale and its local council. All residents depend on the many services provided by our council and in return taxes are levied.

Councillors are elected to ensure that those taxes are spent wisely and for the greater good.

Unfortunately, the use of the power to exclude members of the public and the local press has seen a dramatic increase in the last year. These

powers have now been used four times in the past year and look to continue to be used in the new year.

I have been unable to persuade the leader of the council and the chief executive of the need to be fully open and transparent and allow the council’s debate on decisions of historic importance.

These decisions involving millions of pounds of borrowing are debated behind closed doors. This cannot aid and support local democracy.

Increasingly, people, have spoken to me about

the need to increase local democracy and how can they, as electors, hold the leader of the council and all councillors to account.

The last meeting of Audit and Accounts, held in December, had only been going a few minutes when there was a motion from the chairman of the committee to exclude the public and the press from the rest of the meeting!

The result of this decision, supported by the ruling Labour Group, meant that members of the public had to immediately leave.

The main item of the meeting, the report from the external auditors on the 2015 to 2016 accounts, was heard in private and I am not allowed to report on the subsequent questioning or the debate! As everybody in Rossendale should know by now, the reason the external auditors are still not happy to approve those accounts is the loss of £5,000,000 in the Empty Home Scheme.

The auditor’s report on the 2014 to 2015 accounts has only just been published at the last Audit

and Accounts committee meeting and was the most damning report I have ever seen.

The use of the powers to exclude members of the public and the press has now become entrenched. The only way to have an open and transparent council in Rossendale, where councillors can be held to proper account and the leader of the council is held responsible for the actions of the council, is to vote for Conservative councillors in the local elections on May 2.