I was pleased to see the article about the waste of council money in the 21 March issue of the Voice.
We seem to hear frequently in the local media from Conservative portfolio holders about what a good job they are doing and to be fair, quite often they are. It’s perfectly reasonable that they are given these opportunities to explain their policies but there is another side.
Public toilets.
We do sometimes score, for example with the executives acknowledgement that our public toilets are a disgrace, that followed a working party group on which I served, formed from the Performance Monitoring Panel. Let’s hope proposals for improvements are implemented quickly.
Leisure.
The pressure opposition councillors also applied, sometimes via the local press, regarding the poor quality of leisure services in the District helped to bring about a change in management.
Planning.
I note that Planning Department underspent by a significant amount, perhaps paying more attention to inspecting the quality of construction when new houses are built would have been more important. There will be much new building in coming months and years.
Parking.
The proposal to use County Council officers to police parking is also a very mixed blessing, it’s good to prevent selfish or dangerous parking but so often what actually happens is that wardens simply ticket vehicles to generate revenue and can damage local economies by doing so.
When there are problems within our council they are rarely the fault of officers. They simply do what the ruling group tells them. So it’s important that senior members of the cabinet actually hear what opposition members are saying and act accordingly, rather than steamrolling measures through and trying to justify failures after the event.
Coun Paul Foyster
Holbeach
