Inept leadership

The political voting on the Barnham, Eastergate, Westergate (BEW ) strategic allocation went like this:

Conservative cabinet members in favour six; Conservative backbenchers in favour 11; Conservative backbenchers who did not support the BEW strategic allocation 19 (against and abstentions); Lib Dems in favour four; Lib Dems opposed one; Labour opposed two; Independents in favour two.

This means that the key policy of the local plan does not command a majority in Arun District Council’s Conservative group.

Conservative leader Gillian Brown and cabinet member for planning and infrastructure Ricky Bower, the architects of the local plan, do not have the backing of their Conservative group.

The Arun cabinet does not have the backing of the Conservative back benchers – in fact, they are clearly completely out of touch with their backbenchers (and the public too – not that they have ever cared about that).

The political reality is that Cllr Mrs Brown, Cllr Bower and their cabinet only got their local plan through with the support of Lib Dem and Independent councillors and now Arun’s Conservative group must take forward a local plan that the majority of them do not support.

That should be interesting!

So how did it come to this?

It is the political leadership of a council that provides a ‘steer’ for policy development, which officers must then interpret and work up policy from, and it is the role of the local plan sub-committee to then scrutinise and amend any proposals coming forward (or develop policy proposals itself), before recommending them to full council.

Cllr Mrs Brown, the leader, and Cllr Bower, the cabinet member for planning, have both held their respective offices for around eight years.

In that time, they have become arrogant, complacent and out of touch, not only with their backbenchers, but with the public too.

For many of those years both also sat on the local plan sub-committee (LPSC).

But, is it sound practice for any leader and cabinet member for planning to, in essence, also lead the scrutiny of their own agenda?

I watched many LPSC meetings and it seemed to me that the comments of backbenchers were regularly ignored.

When the Conservative group comes to consider how they got into this incredible political mess they may well want to consider if the LPSC was used by cabinet members to ‘steer through’ an agenda rather than to properly scrutinise and develop policy for what is now an unsound and hugely unpopular local plan.

Tony Dixon

Barons Close

Westergate

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