Friday, June 24, 2011

Room for improvement Mick

Recently elected AM for Pontypridd Mick Antoniw has certainly got a bee in his bonnet about the Council Cabinet system as demonstrated in his question to the Local Government Minister Carl Sargeant on June 15th (below).
Sarge seemed a little peeved by the question. Perhaps Mick and / or his researcher should put a little more thought into future questions.

Mick Antoniw:What consideration has the Welsh Government given to the possibility of re-evaluating the systems of governance for local authorities in Wales. OAQ(4)0011(LGC)
Carl Sargeant: The political structure options available to local government in Wales were addressed in the Local Government (Wales) Measure 2011. The elected mayor and council manager option and the alternative arrangements—or the fourth option, as it was known—were removed, leaving a choice between leader and cabinet and elected mayor and cabinet.
Mick Antoniw: One problem is that there is a limited choice of governance for local authorities—just the mayoral system or the cabinet system—and there seems to be a growing concern about the way in which the cabinet system operates. Is it not appropriate to review how the cabinet system is working? There may be opportunities to give local government, possibly through Welsh legislation, the option of a broader choice of governance systems in future.
Carl Sargeant: I am aware of the concern of the Member for Pontypridd and the papers on this issue. I refer him to the Local Government (Wales) Measure 2011, for which we undertook a consultation on the programme. We did not receive any representations about changing from having a cabinet system to the systems to which the Member referred. However, if he would like to write to me with the detail, I would be happy to look at that.

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