Treating Councillors Like Mushrooms

There is a well-known phenomenon at Newham Council. Councillors have been kept in the dark until the date of a meeting and then had papers, numbering in the hundreds of pages, tabled for their consideration.

We are not so naïve to expect that every page of every paper is read by every councillor, indeed those that read the full papers will be a minority. However, there are those who will read and consider papers. They might even do some research of their own. They will ask questions in advance or ask for briefings to ensure that they have understood both the content and the ramifications.

But they can only do this if they have the papers long enough in advance to read.

Tabling large documents is an archetypical way of ensuring that the contents remain opaque. But this is what has been done to the Standards Advisory Committee.

On Wednesday 10th January, after over one year of waiting, the committee received the 130-page report from the consultants regarding the spat between the mayor and Cllr Terry Paul. To their credit, they refused to discuss the matter there and then, stating that they needed to read and digest the contents before discussing any further action.

So that’s what they are doing.

We await the outcome.