Thoughts on Cheshire East council

AudlemOnline published two articles in the past week that made your editorial team even more curious than usual about what is going on with our local council.

The first article was a press release from Cheshire East describing in quite excruciating language and detail their latest reorganisation that was to turn them into a 'strategic council.' This was followed by a thought-provoking open letter to Cheshire East by an Audlem resident taking the council to task about their announcement, in our view with considerable justification.

All this has prompted us into an 'opinion piece', hopefully to stimulate some debate about an organisation that takes a lot of our money and should be providing vital services, such as decent roads, in return.

Determined

The decision to create two unitary authorities in Cheshire was announced in July 2007 when the then Secretary of State, Hazel Blears, seemed to be determined to split the county in two. The then MP for Crewe & Nantwich, Gwyneth Dunwoody, hinted strongly at questionable personal motives behind Hazel Blear's decision in an explosive Commons speech while most assumed it was made purely for possible party political advantage.

Whatever the motive, two new councils emerged, Cheshire West & Chester and our very own Cheshire East, both run by Conservative majorities. Ominously, they came into being on April Fools Day, 2009.

Impressive speed

As expected, two programmes went ahead almost immediately with impressive speed and efficiency. The new councils' corporate images appeared on signs, vehicles and elsewhere in both halves of Cheshire, although nobody has ever explained why an organisation funded by taxation needs to brand itself so expensively like a commercial product. It's not as if we would buy anything from them, given the choice.

Secondly, brand new offices, beautifully equipped and furnished, appeared in Chester and Sandbach, each run by remarkably well-rewarded new chief executives.

When the new structure was launched, local residents and taxpayers were promised a brave new world with financial savings and improved services through efficiencies in the way the councils worked.

Impression very different

Since then, the impression has been very different, particularly in Cheshire East. Large scale and expensive redundancies affecting thousands of council staff; possibly now the worst roads in England; major financial scandals leading to high profile 'resignations' and regular appearances in Private Eye's Rotten Boroughs column; services disappearing – some of which, fortunately, in Audlem have been saved locally – the departure of the chief executive and, last week, the admission the council has had a pretty useless structure all along – down to 'silos', we were told.

Objective assessment

Perhaps it is now time that a reasonably independent organisation, like the National Audit Office, assessed objectively whether that original reorganisation, and its subsequent implementation, has delivered on its promises and whether local residents have benefited or been harmed by Hazel Blears' decision.

After all, any major change like this should be assessed objectively if only to avoid the same mistakes, if mistakes there have been, being inflicted elsewhere.

Also, taking up the point made in our local resident's open letter that Cheshire East's press release really meant that local communities would have to do more for themselves, there may be a case for Audlem to take over more services, as long as a reasonable proportion of funding currently spent by Cheshire East on these local facilities also comes our way.

Local initiatives

Taking over Audlem's public toilets and the Lunch Club at Thornton House from Cheshire East were amongst the first 'devolution of services' moves in all of Cheshire East. Both seem to be resounding successes. Perhaps now taking ownership and control of other services and assets such as Audlem's playing fields, tennis courts, playground and car park would be worthwhile. They should be better protected from future cuts or selling off of assets and almost certainly run more efficiently locally.

Communicating with residents

In the meantime, judging by recent announcements by deputy leader of the council David Brown about planning, and council chief executive Kim Ryley about the council's reorganisation, Cheshire East need to think long and hard about they way they communicate. We imagine the council's press officers have squirmed with embarrassment as their leaders' missives went out. Both David Brown and Kim Ryley are in serious danger of making fools of themselves with this type of nonsense.

What do you think?

We hope these thoughts might stimulate some healthy debate. What do you think? Do let us know by either adding your comments below or by contacting us at editor@audlem.org

If you want to read the two articles referred to at the start, please click here and here.

This article is from our news archive. As a result pictures or videos originally associated with it may have been removed and some of the content may no longer be accurate or relevant.