The coming of a single unitary council is going to make local forums and partnerships more important than ever. Whether we like it or not, they’re going to be critical in putting the case for our locality alongside your local councillors.

That being the case, it’s important that as many ordinary people as possible get involved. Don’t leave it to someone else or you’ll risk self-appointed cliques getting more influence than you’d like - get involved and play your part.

The Wider Stakeholder Forum describes itself as “a consultative/scrutiny group, membership of which is open to any organisation voluntary, community, public or private, who delivers services or operates within Derwentside or any member of the community who is a service user.”

The next meeting of the Wider Stakeholder Forum will be held on 9th October, starting at 4.00p.m. in Consett.

If you are interested in taking part it is very important that you contact Janie Pollard on 01207 218 271, giving your name, contact details, telephone number and an e-mail address (if you have one), so that details can be forwarded to you nearer the date.

It’s no good leaving it till the last minute. If you do, you’ll miss the boat.

I don’t know about you, but in all the spy stories I read as a kid, when the spy got the blueprint he could do anything; build the submarine, assemble the nuclear bomb, whatever. The blue print was a detailed document.

Not so the new county council’s blueprint which is to be discussed by the cabinet on September 11th. If the “taster” provided to the scrutiny overview committee is anything to go by it its just a rather vague recipe for “motherhood and apple pie”.

It was given a pretty effective panning by members of all political persuasions, frustrated that four months into the new council all we’re getting is buzz words and platitudes when what we really want to know is how we’re going to ensure that service standards don’t plummet across the county in April 2009. 

Of course, we’d prefer services to improve, but since it will take a miracle to maintain them in the first instance in the absence of any clear cut plans, improvements may have to wait!

Today there was a meeting of the county Planning Committee. No decisions affected Derwentside directly, so I found myself in a position I will become increasingly familiar with - making decisions about areas I am unfamiliar with which will affect people I will never meet.

One decision was particularly difficult. A proposal to use a former landfill site for composting of green waste was before the committee, and a site visit had been ordered.

On the one hand there is clearly a need for such composting on environmental grounds. On the other, there was a clearly inadequate and potentially dangerous access, and some wider questions about the suitability of the site.

The best thing about the process was that there was real debate. Local people put their case with passion, and it was clear that councillors were carefully weighing up the arguments before reaching their decision.

In the event I cast my vote for what proved to be the majority view. But if the decision had gone the other way I would still have been satisfied with the process.

I’m sorry if I’ve bored you by writing about something that has nothing to do with my role as your councillor. I just thought it was good to record the fact that there are good days at the office!

I’ll save venting my frustration for the next meeting.

The last chance for is fast approaching you to register to attend the consultation event on how local needs should be served in the unitary authority.

Action Area Partnerships (AAPs if you’re into jargon) are the Big Idea built into the original proposal to create a unitary council. They will be tasked with delivering the promise made by the county of “Greater choice and voice over services through more locally-focused and action-oriented ‘area action partnerships’, as successors to existing district-based local strategic partnerships.

Your chance to find out more and have your say in Consett is on April 29th at St Patrick’s Church Hall, starting at 6.00 p.m.

You can’t just turn up, though. Spaces are limited and to book your place you need to ring Janie Pollard on 01207 218271.  Alternatively email j.pollard@derwentside.gov.uk

Before you turn up you may want to do your homework by consulting http://county.durham.gov.uk/sites/lgraks/Attachments/consult%20document.pdf to put yourself in the picture - or not.

Derwentside doesn’t have much longer to exist, but it seems a real pity if it goes down without ever having had a question asked to a member of the executive and answered under this heading: http://www.derwentside.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=4570

Idly looking at the page I thought I’d go to Councillors FAQs - only to find it completely blank.

I just can’t imagine that there’s no-one in Derwentside who wants to know how the decision was made as to who got offered “brown-lidded” garden waste bins, and who didn’t. I can’t believe that no-one is interested in how many people have been fined for dog-fouling or fly-tipping. I can’t believe that no-one has wanted to know why Belle Vue Swim Centre needs to be replaced.

The reason why I can’t believe it is because I’ve heard all these questions asked myself!

So rather than let Derwentside go down with its executive thinking that no-one is interested in what it is, and has been, doing, why not ask the question you’ve always wanted to?

OK, so you probably guessed right that the Labour Group would not suspend normal party politics and so allow my motion for meetings of the Member Area Panels (see below) to be called. I think the vote was something like 65 - 35.

Sure, the constitution goes by the board. Sure, many members voted “against” even though they probably actually favoured the motion for local councillors to have some say in local issues. But no doubt they’re proud to display that “they” have more votes than “us”. It’s just a pity to have good aguments ignored because they come from the “wrong side”.

Just in case you’re not sure what the MAPs were meant to do, here’s their role as defined in the constitution:

• to deliberate issues of a local nature and promote members’ participation and involvement in local community activity;

• to feed back to Cabinet issues of local concern;

• to facilitate partnership working at the local level with other public and voluntary agencies and to provide a political input by local County Councillors into Local Strategic Partnerships on the basis of County Council policy, planning and strategy;

• to maintain an overview of Community Development in the District area and in particular to advise on priorities and provide County Councillor support into local community regeneration partnerships;

• to inform the expenditure of budgets delegated to chief officers for area-based initiatives.

So if you can see that those things aren’t happening in your area, you know who to blame. All the guilty parties will be named in the Council Minute Book. 

The most absurd thing, however, was to watch the Conservatives. I’m beginning to wonder what motivates them since they seem to have abstained on almost every issue raised at council. Fortunately no-one in Derwentside has to worry since none were elected here, but if I had voted for them I’d be worrying about exactly what I was getting for my money. I may be doing them an injustice, of course. Perhaps they really didn’t know whether they supported the constitutional right to local democracy!

I won’t let it rest here. In my book you can only ignore the constitution in a dictatorship - and the people of County Durham won’t stand for that.

You may spot the literary illusion - OK, I used to be an English teacher - but the title of Graham Greene’s book is a fitting description for the current Durham County Council.

For years the Member Area Panels (MAPs for short) have met to give the chance for county councillors from each district to meet together, discuss issues, allocate resources and plan within their districts. It’s been an essential part of keeping the “local” in local government, so important that it’s enshrined in the constitution of the county council.

Since the last county election, however, none of the MAPs have met. There’s been no official announcement, no change to the constitution, just a deafening silence.

That’s why I’m moving a motion at the county council meeting tomorrow for the MAPs to be re-convened. And I’ve taken the unusual step of writing to every county councillor in Derwentside to ask them to support the motion because there are things we need to be doing, important issues to decide, and not the least important of those is the issue of Consett Sports Centre. Wouldn’t it be a good idea for the Derwentside MAP to meet and hammer out any differences we may have in the interests of ensuring decent sports facilities for Consett?

There are other things to decide, too. Road repairs and the programme for the next financial year could be discussed. Car Parking policy will need to be sorted out by the new authority because it’s too late now for the District Council to face up to it, and the sooner we start talking realistically about that future, the better the chance that we get some action before the town centres in Consett and Stanley are finally strangled to death.

That’s why I hope that every councillor in Derwentside will back the re-formation of the member area panels. And by tomorrow night I’ll know if I’m just a born optimist, or whether most councillors are actually in it to achieve the best for their area just as I am.

There was a time when Prime Ministers made announcements to Parliament, and then they were published in the press.

There was a time when council leaders made announcements to councillors, and then they were published in the press.

That was because there was respect for electors, and a recognition that the votes they cast for their representatives (whether for the party in power or not) counted for something.

Those days are gone. P.R. has replaced the old-fashioned notion of democracy.

Earlier this year I found out who the county council cabinet was to be from the Northern Echo. On Saturday I discovered that the new county council wanted to know how local people thought that power and influence should be passed back to them, and would be holding public consultation events - through the Northern Echo. Two days later I received the information from the leader of the council!

The Labour county council cabinet could not make it plainer that they have no respect for “back-bench” councillors. In doing so they could not make it plainer that they have no respect for their electors either.

But that’s why I love the old-fashioned notion of democracy. All parties that take the electorate for-granted get their come-uppance in due course. It can’t happen too soon for me.

I like elections, but even I am concerned at the prospect of yet another election in 2010. Sadly it seems to be becoming more and more likely as the Boundary Commission sets out on a review of County Durham.

If it carries out its intention it will mean that we’ve had District elections in 2007, County elections in 2008 and County again in 2010.

Yes, theBoundary Commision does have a point that the current two members per ward has produced too big a county council to work well. 126 councillors is too unwieldy. Yes the Boundary Commision does have a point that the numbers don’t add up, with some wards having many more voters than others. But what’s wrong with the idea is that we’re supposed to be working together to create a new unitary council to begin in 2009, and holding another election in 2010 means that:

• Nothing will be properly “bedded in” and it will be impossible for anyone to judge the new county’s performance so soon
• Another election will have big financial costs
• The worst thing, though, is that councillors will have their eyes on the coming election instead of making the new council work. Political in-fighting and back-stabbing could irreparably damage the new council even before it’s out of the blocks

If that’s the way its got to be, however, that’s the way it will be. And if elections come in 2010, local Lib Dems will be up for it.

At the meeting of Durham County Council today the Labour Party showed that it had learnt nothing from its mauling at the ballot box.

In this blog a week or so ago, I said we would learn a lot today, and we did. Rather than hold out an olive branch to the opposition, the Labour group offered Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and Independents nothing by way of a cabinet post.

When it came to the positions of Chair and Vice-Chair of the prestigious scrutiny committees they again offered nothing to Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and the larger Independent Group, but did offer two vice chairmanships to the tiny rump of independents (6 in all) who have lined up behind John Shuttleworth from Weardale.

Call me an old cynic if you like, but doesn’t that smack just a tiny bit of using the power of patronage to bring on board just enough extra votes to make sure that they have protection from any minor rebellions in the ranks?

Ironically, round the fringes, our Group Leader, Nigel Martin, and I were both appointed vice-chairs of a non-executive committee but I would gladly have swapped mine for one of our group getting a place in cabinet. That would have offered real hope that the County Council was going to adopt a positive and constructive approach to building the new unitary council. What we saw today offers no such hope.