Lib Dems Object to Corporate Plan (Oxfordshire Liberal Democrats)

Oxfordshire Liberal Democrats <info@oxfordshirelibdems.org.uk>

Lib Dems Object to Corporate Plan

February 13, 2007 12:00 AM
By Cllr Janet Godden in County Council

The Corporate Plan is the most important parts of today's proceedings: the detailed budgets on which we're about to spend 4 hrs is an annex to this Plan, which is hard to follow, full of repetition, and lacking the draft Foreword by the Leader of the Council. It should be referred back for this reason alone: if Cllr Mitchell takes so little interest in it, why should the rest of us be expected to put up our hands for it?

We are told at the beginning that this Plan reflects "the manifesto commitment supported by the people of Oxfordshire in 2005". Only by 34% of the voters, though. The remaining 66% who did not vote for this manifesto may feel as I do about the section 'Our values' on p.9-10, which every time it's revised gets significantly further from the values that first brought me onto this Council. Social Inclusion, for instance, is no longer one of the 'areas we focus on'. No focus therefore on the Council's duties as a provider of services to those who need help. Too much stress for my liking on the Council being "much more than a service provider", a notion that so excites the writers of the plan that they repeat it twice in one 5-line paragraph on p.17, where we also read that the County Council is a "substantial business" and has important responsibilities as a Community Leader. I beg to differ with all that. Local authorities are not primarily businesses, and they are primarily service providers. I'm not even sure that they are Community Leaders, which has a ring of Brown Owl about it. And good leaders take care to involve everyone.

Which leads me on to 'One team'. Can you really talk of one team when 50 players are sent off to the fringes of the pitch where no ball comes near them from year's end to year's end? The Administration's need to keep the chairs and vice chairs of the Scrutiny committees in its own hands, contrary to Westminster practice, is a sign of weakness not of strength, but that becomes worrying in the case of an Administration elected with only 34% of the vote. There is no reason why we should sign up to the ill-presented central strategy of a nervous, weak administration. Most of us would prefer an Administration that felt confident about itself, that was proud of being a provider of services, and showed that it valued the input of others.