Will council swim against the tide?

If you want something amusing to read why don’t you read the report tabled for the Oversight and Scrutiny Committee.

Apparently the reason the CGR Steering group and the Overview and Scrutiny Committee and Cabinet will not be offering a steer to full council is ‘given the importance of the decision’.

Surely it was always an important matter and the whole Community Governance Review process was put in place with this in mind one assumes.

So why on earth are they not offering a steer?

Could it be that Rother has woken up to the fact that no change is not an option for Bexhill? Could it be that they are shifting around for an option which will not curtail their powers too much? Do they need to avoid a town council at all costs?

Clearly option 4 for four parish councils – suddenly introduced in Stage 2 of the consultation by a rural councillor who clearly has no idea how Bexhill operates – will not be considered a reasonable option. This leaves us with an area committee, which only received 71 votes, the lowest score of all. It sinks into oblivion when compared to 8,458 for a town council.

In most other UK elections, first past the post, even with a majority of one, wins. But apparently not in Bexhill where the majority for a town council was over 8,000!

So will Rother now swim against the tide of public opinion and try to persuade us in the next three council meetings that we don’t know our own minds and what we want is an area committee. This would be under the control of Rother and one assumes councillors would receive extra allowances for this, so no incentive there then.

A prize for someone who can guess how many times area committee will be mentioned in total at these three meetings! Believe me I would love to be wrong.

Sorry folks, but the public meeting on December 2 will not be going forward. The Town Council in Waiting group were very much in favour of this, but some of the high-ups in D4B wanted us to put all our energies into the rally in advance of the meeting at 5.30 on December 18. Let us hope for good weather.

Hope to see you there.