Sniffer Owen
I first knew I was a nerd when I was the only one of the 27 Lib Dem Councillors on Durham County Council to ask to go on the audit committee. I’ll certainly know it on Thursday when I spend the morning on the Audit Committee at the County Council, and the afternoon at the Audit Committee of the District Council.
The result of this nerdiness was about four hours spent going through accounts. And did I come up with anything? Well actually, yes I did. Nothing earth shattering, but one question I raised was how the number of allotments had risen from 68 to 84. This produced the answer that actually they hadn’t. The original figure of 64 was just plain wrong, as was 84. It should have been 87!
Was it for this that I entered local politics. Not really. Except that taking the job seriously, looking at the detail, asking the questions, is the absolutely necessary part of councillors making sure that the administration is doing the job right. And of course, there were more interesting questions.
I was particularly taken by the answer to my question about how much land had been transferred to Project Genesis this year, and for what price? The answer apparently is 27.39 hectares (which you will instantly know to be 67.68 acres) for £2 “as specified in the Genesis Project agreement”. Now that did interest me because although I’ve heard this figure before, I’ve never seen it written in any of the original agreement papers. In fact, if the papers I’ve been provided with are accurate copies, the figure in the supervision agreement is actually blank!
When you link that to the fact that the original deed setting up the Genesis Trust specified that the leader of the largest opposition party on the council should be represented on the trustees ex officio, but the current one was unaware of it, you wonder exactly what control our council has been exerting over the trust.
Sniffer Owen is hoping for answers to that on Wednesday’s meeting. Let me know if you’re interested too.
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