THE LEADER of Worceter City Council has slammed rival party leaders after the authority voted to ditch the current cabinet system in favour of a committee approach.
Coun Adrian Gregson claimed the city council will now be ‘stuck for five years on a system which is 100 years old’.
The change to how the authority is governed was agreed at a full Council meeting on Tuesday (November 22) with members backing a motion brought by Conservative group leader Coun Marc Bayliss and seconded by Green Party leader Coun Louis Stephen.
The Labour group had proposed an amendment to delay any changes until further the scrutiny task force set up to examined how the council was run had completed its work but the vote was defeated.
Despite the Labour group abstaining on the issue, the change was approved meaning from May next year most decisions are made by committees with cross-party membership, reflecting the political make-up of the council.
Speaking after the vote, Coun Gregson said: “I cannot make decisions on the basis of no evidence or analysis so can only abstain at this point.
“It’s incorrect to say February is too late to decide on implementing changes in May,” he added.
During the debate, Coun Bayliss said: “It’s a binary system where you have all the power or none of it.”
“The system as it is at the moment does not respond well to periods where no party has overall control.”
Coun Stephen echoed his comments and said: “I don’t want to waste all of our time arguing and indulging in petty point scoring – most of Worcester’s residents expect more of us than that.
“They expect us to sort out the bins, cut the hedges, promote the city and look after the homeless,” he added.
But Coun Gregson claimed the proposals were ‘well distant from reality’ and said: “We must have a governance system which is fit for purpose.”
He expressed his anger at the proposals and accused the other two parties of a ‘power grab’ and of ‘plotting in secret talks’.
Work will now begin on detailed proposals for how the new system will be set up, what committees will need to be formed and how many members of each party will sit on them.
These proposals will be brought to the full council meeting in February and there will then be a public consultation on them.
Worcester City Council had a committee system in place until 2001 and after a 12-month experimental period it then adopted the current Leader and Cabinet system in 2002, as required by national legislation at that time.
The Localism Act 2011 gave councils the right to change their governance arrangements.
Under the act, the new system Worcester City Council will bring in has to remain in place for at least five years.
