Town Council meeting minutes (part 3): Labour Party or Lazy Party?
This time I had to ask for help lawyer to confirm my suspicions. She did. At this point, I can write about it without any fear that I will “jump the gun” before law strike those who ignore their duties and failed residents of Shirebrook. Things are already in motion and there is only Coronavirus legislation standing in the way to a solution. But before we get to that- let me explain what is all about.
If you can analyse picture below you probably know what is all about. Yet again- “sea of red” is a bad thing and something even worst hides behind it.
At first glance, I didn’t notice it but when I created a spreadsheet with STC Councillors attendance it strikes me like a hammer. Usually, when councillor can’t attend a meeting- he/she sends apologies noted in minutes. But in our council there were two councillors who not only not attend meetings but also fail to send apologies- that’s why when I read minutes, I didn’t notice that they are missing constantly since July 2019.
After a few minutes of work, I was able to find out that those two councillors missed 10 out of 12 meetings of the council since elections. Two other missed 8 out of 12 meetings. An overall number of councillors who missed 50% or more meetings is 6- that is almost half of the Council. Another 5 councillors missed 5 meetings.
I was shocked- why Council Leader didn’t do anything about it? Why Labour Party ignores the fact that some of the representatives ignore their duties? Why this wasn’t mentioned at any of the meetings? Why nothing was done to provide proper representation for residents of South of Shirebrook ward? Why residents of Shirebrook agree to laziness, inactivity, mismanagement?
What takes up one meeting in other councils, in Shirebrook, takes up several meetings divided into different committees. I analysed several Councils- no other than STC created FIVE separate Committees. Most crazy one? Leisure! Labour Party think it is justified to spent time and taxpayers money to organize parties, festivals and car shows and at the same time- ignore growing year after year crime wave in Town. Anyway- I can understand that less involved Councillors will skip Committee meetings that they are not members. But how you can explain that two of Labour Party councillors missing ALL full council meetings? Why they even started in the election? Why they didn’t resign when they realised it’s not their thing and/or they don’t have time for it and/or they don’t care about town? I feel a temptation to ask them those questions…
Right after I found out about this blatant breach of public trust, I took matters in my own hands: I started research on how to get rid of those bad councillors and… it looks like there is NO WAY to dismiss bad councillor. Literally- no way. The only instance where Councillor can lose his seat is if he/she was convicted in a court of law. That is it. But I didn’t give up. I dig into the Local Government Act 1972 and… I found paragraph 85 subsection 1.
I’m a working-class bloke. Legal text? Not my thing. Local Government Act is 300 pages long so it took me a lot of time to digest it. But this paragraph is quite straightforward:
“(…)if a member of a local authority fails throughout a period of six consecutive months from the date of his last attendance to attend any meeting of the authority, he shall, unless the failure was due to some reason approved by the authority before the expiry of that period, cease to be a member of the authority.“
In my opinion, Cllr G. Wardle and R.Wardle of the Labour Party fail their voters and vacated their seats. Lawyer shares my opinion. Minutes from February meeting are still to be published but if Cllr Fred Gobey didn’t attend- according to the law: he also vacated his seat.
Follow up procedure would be simple if not for Coronavirus– on next STC meeting there should by announced a “declaration of a vacancy” followed by time to stand up for election and by-election or awarding seat uncontested. Coronavirus legislation forbids organisation of any election till May 2021 so due to Labour Party councillors laziness, we could end up with 3 fewer councillors than we should have.
Question is: would Labour Party field yet another set of candidates just to fill seats and hold a full grip on power in town and hold their secret meetings for the next 3 years? I can assure all my readers- I will sign in for election and if I win, I will provide constant and more accurate information from the heart of STC.
Sylwester Zwierzynski info@shirebrook247.com
Lead photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
Chart by Shirebrook.247.com
