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Labour Councillor breaks ranks at watershed meeting

"Many of us were very disappointed by the Mayor's performance when interviewed by this committee. He just seems to have endorsed officers' advice. He should exercise strong civic leadership which is impossible if the person sees himself as a rubber-stamp for a regime run by officers. We expect more of a directly elected mayor. I would like to ask him if he still has confidence in the advice he is receiving from the Head of the Directorate for Children and Young People."

The above is a quote from Cllr Paul Maslin's speech at the last meeting of the Sub-committee on Ladywell that took place on Wednesday 1st February.

Clearly exasperated by the incompetent advice of some of the Council's top officers and the Mayor's acquiescent attitude towards it, Cllr Maslin decided that enough is enough, and braving party discipline decided to speak his mind about the way affairs are run at Lewisham Council and how democratic scrutiny has progressively disappeared.

It is possible that this meeting will be remembered as a watershed not just for what concerns our campaign, but also for the Executive Mayor reform introduced in Lewisham and the loss of democracy that its implementation has created.

Cllr Maslin still supports a school at Ladywell, but does so purely because of a concern over further delays with the new school project.

We are happy to argue on that as we believe that a change of plan doesn't necessarily means further delays for a new school and that the forecast void in sport and swimming provision is concern enough for an active search for a different site.

As for the rest of the sub-committee, only one member present Cllr Madeleine Long tried to keep to the usual script and have the document presented by Barry Quirk approved.

Fortunately her well-practiced bullying tactics didn't work (it's not the first time) and when it was obvious even to Cllr Long that the committee was not happy about the report she switched tactics and moved that the report be ‘noted’.
That got voted on so quickly that if you had blinked you would have missed it.

But not all the members voted for this either.

Cllr Julia Fletcher and sub-committee chair Cllr Barrie Anderson didn't cast a vote.

Cllr Lefevre  abstained.

Cllr Julia Fletcher and Cllr Helen Lefevre will be submitting their own minority report to the committee.

They considered that this report diverged too far from reality only to be only criticized verbally at the meeting.

The members recognized that the performance of the top layer of Council officers on this matter has been extremely disappointing and great criticism was voiced at the way important findings were 'understated' in the report.

The meeting ended with recommendations for reforms to be introduced in Lewisham so that in the future such poor performance is avoided as, hopefully, proper scrutiny and democracy are re-introduced at Lewisham Town Hall.

On the issue of the school building program, a warning was made that the game isn't over yet. There are still great risks in the project to be overcome, particularly in planning, that scrutiny should engage going forward. ...read more...