Opposition leader claims move breaches pre-election pledge by Labour
Cllr Gary Malcolm addresses the council on the issue of ward forums
A meeting of Ealing Council this week (26 July) saw confirmation of plans to scrap ward forums in the borough.
The move has been condemned by the opposition Liberal Democrats who say it is a breach of a pre-election pledge by the Labour Party.
Plans for new town-based forums were revealed during the meeting. As opposed to the 23 ward forums that used to meet at least twice a year previously, there will now be seven local committees covering a wider area. In answer to a question by the leader of the Liberal Democrat group Cllr Gary Malcolm, the leader of the Council, Cllr Peter Mason, confirmed that the two structures would not run in parallel.
The Labour-run council had previously proposed scrapping the ward forums in 2019 but drew back from this move following public opposition.
The ward forums were led by the ward councillors who controlled a budget of around £20,000 to be spent on local initiatives. In addition, the meetings, which were open to the public, would discuss matters such as community safety, traffic and transport schemes, parks and street improvements.
The new town-based forums will share up to £2 million to be raised from the Community Infrastructure Levy(CIL which is raised from developers when permission is given for planning applications. These will be spent on facilitating community initiatives and microfinancing.
The council says it is going to set up steering groups with ward councillors and residents who are interested in taking a leading role. These steering groups will agree on the approach to the Town Forum in each of the seven towns to prepare for launch in Autumn
It is also planned for a training and development programme to be commissioned for members on their role as ‘community leaders’ and set aside initial funding for projects to be developed by the Town Forums until money from the CIL is available.
While the Liberal Democrats did control the budget for ward forums where they had the majority of councillors including Southfield ward, it is understood that Labour will now have the majority on all of the new town forums.
Councillor Gary Malcolm, Liberal Democrat Leader of the Opposition, Ealing Council said, “Liberal Democrats have seen over the past decade that ward forums are loved and have a high attendance. Replacing them with the seven Town committees means that decision making will be taken further away from people. In covid times, residents and businesses wanted to be more involved in their communities. Labour promised to keep ward forums before the election but now that was a blatant lie.”
“Liberal Democrats want to see the Council doing the basics correctly but in the past few months they have had to get rid of two failed contractors, had two IT failures causing residents issues with parking, data management and other web services. Labour-run Ealing Council has failed to manage housing checks and repairs, meaning that thousands of tenants may have been living in unsafe conditions.”
We have asked Ealing Council for comment.
Like Reading Articles Like This? Help Us Produce More This site remains committed to providing local community news and public interest journalism. Articles such as the one above are integral to what we do. We aim to feature as much as possible on local societies, charities based in the area, fundraising efforts by residents, community-based initiatives and even helping people find missing pets. We've always done that and won't be changing, in fact we'd like to do more. However, the readership that these stories generates is often below that needed to cover the cost of producing them. Our financial resources are limited and the local media environment is intensely competitive so there is a constraint on what we can do. We are therefore asking our readers to consider offering financial support to these efforts. Any money given will help support community and public interest news and the expansion of our coverage in this area. A suggested monthly payment is £8 but we would be grateful for any amount for instance if you think this site offers the equivalent value of a subscription to a daily printed newspaper you may wish to consider £20 per month. If neither of these amounts is suitable for you then contact info@neighbournet.com and we can set up an alternative. All payments are made through a secure web site. One-off donations are also appreciated. Choose The Amount You Wish To Contribute. If you do support us in this way we'd be interested to hear what kind of articles you would like to see more of on the site – send your suggestions to the editor. For businesses we offer the chance to be a corporate sponsor of community content on the site. For £30 plus VAT per month you will be the designated sponsor of at least one article a month with your logo appearing if supplied. If there is a specific community group or initiative you'd like to support we can make sure your sponsorship is featured on related content for a one off payment of £50 plus VAT. All payments are made through a secure web site. |
July 28, 2022
