In a post a few weeks ago, we made some suggestions for some tasks that our village council could set itself in 2024 – mostly sorting out stuff in the district that really needs sorting out.
Admittedly, those particular suggestions would cost some money (though the council has actually quite a lot of surplus in its finances to pay for them).
So, in this post, here are a few suggestions the village council could try for free…
# Set up a council ‘working-group’ for community-affairs.
Compared to surrounding districts, such as Checkley or Hilderstone, Draycott seems to lack a spark. We do have good community groups in our village but they seem isolated from each other. So, we need a way to bring them together, as well as have a forum to discuss interesting ideas. Such a working group could do that.
A council ‘working-group’ is not a formal council committee but a discussion-group, that consists of one or more councillors and some residents. A ‘working-group’ doesn’t have decision-making powers but its recommendations must be taken seriously.
At the moment Draycott Council has no sub-committees and only one working-group (the Blythe Park Monitoring working group), so there is plenty of room for another one.
(A lot of councils now also have a Climate Change working-group, but Draycott councillors have expressed little or no interest in climate-change issues.)
# Set up half-hour ‘surgeries’.
At regular council meetings, the public are not allowed to take part in the debates, unless given very specific permission – so when exactly can they converse with their councillors (outside of just meeting on the street)?
What other councils do about this is to hold short ‘surgeries’, when one or more councillors make themselves available to the public – for example, Blythe Bridge council have a monthly one on Saturday mornings.
It would be easy to have such ‘surgeries’: and one obvious time for Draycott councillors to turn up to meet the public is at the church-hall’s fortnightly tea-and-biscuits get-together session (see our What’s On page for times of that).
# Produce council minutes much earlier.
At the moment, the council’s draft minutes (i.e., the draft record of what was discussed at a meeting) are not published for a month. But, there is no reason why they should not be published much sooner than that, even within a week of the meeting, which would be very useful, especially when vital issues have just been debated.
The council could even set up an email alert (for example, through the mail-chimp app) to notify people exactly when the draft minutes are published.
# Make being able to hear meetings easier.
There are usually only about three or four members of the public attending a Draycott council meeting – which is very bad for local democracy. And one of the reasons so few people attend is because they can’t actually hear what the councillors are saying! (This is because most of the seven councillors face away from the public, towards the back of the hall, where the chairperson is sitting).
Other councils have solved this problem by changing the seating arrangement – into a V-shape or a wide horseshoe shape, which forces the councillors to speak up, but also makes their faces & lips more visible to the public.
(Some village councils have gone as far as introducing microphones, or even hearing-loops, but that involves a cost of course).
# Publish the agenda earlier
Another way to attract the public to meetings is to publish the agenda earlier than it is now – with the background-papers (or links to them) included. Sometimes the agenda is only made available to the public three days before a meeting.
An earlier notification would give the public some time to study the issues that are coming up at the next meeting. (Late additions to the agenda at the actual meeting would still be allowed of course).
Again, the council could use the ‘mail-chimp’ email-alert subscription system to get the information to residents as soon as it is published.
# Respect the free assembly!
Every year, the residents of semi-rural villages, such as Draycott, have the ancient right to hold an annual free assembly. The council has a small role in this, in that they must organise a date and a venue for it, but, essentially, it’s a free assembly of residents.
In recent years though, the Draycott Assembly has often been hi-jacked by the council: including councillors who just want to run it their way, or it has just been jammed up (because of council interference), usually with speakers’ talks. Some other councils even have the gall to restrict the free assembly to no more than a 30-minute slot in an evening! In these ways, the residents themselves are side-lined.
The obvious solution is for the council, having organised a date and time for the assembly, to hand over the organisation of it to some co-opted or volunteer residents, who can organise it to be what it really should be.
Any more for any more?
These ideas are just a very few ways in which Draycott council could introduce measures that (hopefully) will improve the working of the district – and will cost nothing.
So…. do you have other inexpensive ideas that the council could take up, which could improve the way it works or its relationship with its public?
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