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No change for Argyll and Bute: Council Leader refuses video conferencing to former Council Leader

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In an indication of the lack of any genuine change either in attitude or in modus operandi at Argyll and Bute Council, former SNP Council Leader, Councillor James Robb, has had recent reason to send the email below to Chief Executive Sally Loudon.

‘Sally
The council decision to spend £0.5m a year on 9 extra but unnecessary meetings is not proving very effective or efficient.
I thought it helpful to share with other members that the ability to attend by VC is entirely at the whim of the Chair.
At Committees where the Chairing duties are too onerous for one person, is a vote amongst the Chairs required to decide attendance by VC? I can’t find anything in the constitution on that point.
The Executive – Policy and Resources Committee  agenda tomorrow is very light, without much substance and very few actual decisions so should not take very long if chaired properly. It would seem ideal for a VC link. The Council has agreed it is now constitutional  for members to attend and vote by VC. You have passed my request, as required by Standing Orders, to attend by VC to Councillor Walsh as Chair. He has refused but given no reason other than it is his desire that I attend. Please record that in the minutes and my apologies for this enforced absence.
Regards
James

The irrational and obstructive attitude highlighted here by Councillor Robb indicates the charade that is ‘Argyll and Bute for Change’. This is Councillor Walsh’s familiar old-style Stalinism – and it comes with a hefty price ticket in these times of cuts to essential services.

Argyll’s topography sets severe challenges to a wide range of cost efficiencies – and one is travel to council and council committee meetings of any kind.

Wherever a meeting is held, there will be many councillors travelling miles, often with added ferry journeys and overnight accommodation.

The current administration has seen fit to increase the annual diet of meetings and therefore incur additional administrative cost – when the budgets for core public services are under threat.

Given the costs involved and given that anything recognisable as ‘debate’ is virtually unheard of at Argyll and Bute Council, there is every reason why the decision to make constitutional the attendance and voting for elected members by video conferencing [VC], should be honoured in implementation.

Conversely, there is no reason why this decision should not be implemented. Why take a decision and then refuse to deploy it?

With the nature of the meeting in question described by Councilor Robb, his request to attend and vote by VC was unarguably sensible. For such a request in such a context to be refused without explanation or defence – but simply by order -  is unacceptable.

It is hard to suppress the suspicion that this behaviour was no more than juvenile personal and punitive nuisance inflicted on a known member of what, in a chamber lacking in any opposition, is regarded as ‘the awkward squad’ – someone who asks questions.

This is an abuse of process to which Audit Scotland should be wise.

It is also a vigorous regrowth of an administrative culture which the Argyll and Bute electorate rejected in May 2012 – a desire for change so betrayed by the shenanigans the SNP party hierarchy inflicted on its own SNP-led coalitions at Kilmory that Argyll has seen the reinstatement of that rejected old order.

This incident is an unpleasant signal of an unchanged culture.

It will be interesting to see what Audit Scotland, in its forthcoming report on the council, makes of an administration where this is how a leader treats his fellow councillors and where potentially unpopular decisions on spending cuts have been devolved to council officers to make.


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