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20 March 2023
It’s been a pretty depressing week or so. However, I am looking forward to the bright side.
I suppose I should have been depressed by the press coverage of the complaints against me (see blog of 11 March 2023). The Bucks Free Press reported inaccurately so presumably thousands of their readers now think I am banned from the Council offices (I’m not) and have been forced to apologise (I haven’t).
I asked the BFP to correct their articles and it didn’t respond. So, I have complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation.
However, I’m afraid this is par for the course now with the BFP. So, it didn’t depress me (although it really angered my husband).
Nor did the BFP mention that I had formally complained to Bucks Council of abuse of process and institutional harassment and bullying. Nor did the BFP mention that the people I complained about in BC decided I had no case and said, if I wasn’t satisfied, I could complain to the Ombudsman. So, I have.
But that’s par for the course too.
In the meantime, Cllr Cadwallader, the Chair of HPC was the only person in HPC to have been sent a copy of the draft report from BC. He didn’t share it with councillors so all the councillors in HPC, except Cllr Cadwallader, were blindsided by the publicity.
I understand the draft report will only be shared with councillors when the agenda and papers are sent out for the meeting at which the matter will be considered by Council. This will be April at the earliest.
And last week, I e-mailed the Clerk explaining why I think at least four HPC councillors, including the Chair, should recuse themselves from the decision-making on the issue. We will see where it goes.
But that isn’t what depressed me either.
What really depressed me is that the work of the Council is still being carried by a handful of councillors (literally) and much of my time and effort on Council work is being wasted.
The Council meeting scheduled for 14 March had to be cancelled because public notice wasn’t provided in compliance with HPC’s Standing Orders (and the law). An Extraordinary meeting has been arranged for tomorrow, 21 March, to take forward the business but I still don’t know if the meeting will be quorate.
Four councilors have said they can attend, two have said they can’t and four haven’t responded.
So, I have to decide today whether to spend a few hours reading the papers for the meeting, including the tedious task of checking invoices against the list of payments – all in the hope that four other councillors will turn up and the meeting will go ahead.
I could of course just turn up at the Council meeting without reading the papers. However, I just don’t do that.
It is doubly depressing because I have put down three resolutions for the meeting - resolutions which have taken considerable work by myself and others.
What is depressing is doing all the work when some councillors can’t even say whether they can attend the meeting.
Which got me thinking.
When residents are considering joining the Council, one of the first questions they ask is how much time does it take. My standard answer is it’s a long as a piece of string; it depends on how much time you wish to spend.
The minimum legal requirement is for a councillor to attend a Council meeting once every six months. Since I became a councillor in 2021, there has been two councillors who have attended once, or never, and then ceased to be a councillor, without explanation.
The minimum expectation is that a councillor attends Full Council meetings once a month, having read the papers, then contributes to the discussion and brings an independent judgement to decisions (as Standing Orders put it).
I hesitate to say how many councillors have failed to do this since 2021.
I think it fair to say that I have exceeded that expectation. I think I have attended and contributed to every Full and Extraordinary Council meeting since May 2021, except in June 2022 when I apologised for my absence because of the stress of all the complaints and health issues.
Over the weekend I also did a rough list of the work I have done for the Council since Christmas, as well as attending meetings (see below).
I have to make it very clear that some other councillors could compile a similar list.
I have said before that, if the Council censures or sanctions me because of the complaints, it would be pretty meaningless; I could more or less carry on regardless. The more important question is whether I want to.
Do I really want to work so hard for a Council which censures me when, like some other councillors, I could just opt out?
And the answer has to be no.
And that, as my husband says, would be good. He is looking forward to my being censured and stopping all this work. He is looking forward to having more of my company. And I look forward to stepping back and letting others take the load.
I said there was a bright side.
My husband was also kind enough to point out some more good news. So far, as a councillor, my behaviour has been very moderate. I don’t shout, I don’t call people names, I very rarely criticise people and I often thank and praise people for their work. I am polite and business like.
If you skim through my blogs (say) over the past year, you will see they are largely factual and pretty anodyne. I can assure you I have been very circumspect in my reporting.
My husband asked, if you are censured when you behave well, and other councillors are not censured when they behave badly, why should you continue to behave well? You too, he said, could lose your temper and shout at colleagues, you too could be rude and disrespectful, you too could criticise your colleagues and be far less circumspect.
That would be so much fun. After decades of acting professionally, I could have a rant, storm out of meetings and tell it like it is.
Another bright side. I’m looking forward to it.
Some of the things I have done since Christmas, in no particular order: -
- Chaired meetings of the Streetlights Working Group;
- Authorised payments from HPC’s bank account once a month;
- Helped to get the Primrose Hill allotment site cleared and put proposals to Council for mini-allotments;
- Put proposals to Council to progress the registration of paths through Cockshoot Wood as rights of way;
- Was a member of the panel interviewing candidates for the role of Clerk;
- Suggested a procedure for councillors to submit draft resolutions which would make business quicker and easier;
- Set out my concerns about the proposed lease with the Great Kingshill Cricket Club, attended meeting of Working Group set up to progress the lease, and drafted letter for the Clerk to send to HPC solicitors;
- Urged Council to agree priorities and prepared proposals;
- Offered to prepare a handover pack for new staff (not taken up);
- Helped draft and commented on minutes of Council meetings;
- Commented, on behalf of the Council, on possible reductions in Local Policing Areas across the Thames Valley
- Prepared the Council’s policies and procedures on filling vacancies (approved at the January Council meeting) and prepared an explanatory leaflet for residents thinking of becoming a councillor;
- Commented on the invitations to tender for ground maintenance contract;
- Helped the Clerk find out where all the dog bins are in the parish;
- Helped compile a list of Council decisions which are outstanding;
- Contributed to a review of Standing Orders;
- Raised a planning enforcement complaint about a site at Four Ashes and chased it up with BC;
- Commented on proposed cycleways to Hughenden Valley;
- Represented HPC on Widmer End Residents’ Association; and
- Not to mention, communicated the Council’s work on this blogsite!