Special council meeting to discuss councillors meeting too often

Councillor Storr has long been concerned that the total mileage of councillors is increasing, despite council commitments to reduce travel and carbon emissions.  She successfully pressed for a review of council meeting at the powerful Scrutiny and Audit Committee.  However she was amazed to find that the paper on this is the main item on the Agenda of a Special Meeting of the Committee.

Councillor Storr commented "There is something ridiculous in 14 councillors specially meeting to discuss the serious problem of the increasing trend in councillors mileage.  This meeting will add around 650 miles to councillors business mileage at a cost of around £300."

She added "The fact that the report proposes no action makes matters worse.  With little visible analysis, the report proposes the status quo.  With fewer planning application needimng to be decided by Area Committees, I believe that Area Committees could meet on longer cycles than the current 3 week cycle.  My own committee did not meet at all over the summer and the gap from 29th June to 31st August, 9 weeks, does not seem to have caused the world to end.  A modest adjustment to a 9 week cycle for main committees and full Council meeting and for Area Committees to 4 or 5 weeks would lead to a 15% decrease in the number of meetings.  As the current cycles already sometimes extend to up to 14 weeks for policy committees, there can not be any rational reason for not making such a modest change."