EADT today – p13
Suffolk’s New Strategic direction:
when is a consultation not a consultation?
When you consult the people of Suffolk
AFTER you’ve made your decision!
We Lib Dems are deeply concerned about the minimal – and cursory – nature of the consultation being offered to the people of Suffolk re the County Council’s NSD New Strategic Direction.
For a start, don’t you suspect that the bland jargonese of the phrase ‘New Strategic Direction’ is enough to put any listener to sleep. How convenient! If you called it ‘Selling the Family Silver’ they might wake up with a jerk.
So much for the terminology. Now the process. On the 23 September, the Tory administration promised
that there should be pro-active and wide-ranging engagement across Suffolk to establish whether the key NSD proposals find favour with communities we all represent before moving forward to implementation; and the findings from the engagement be reported back to Full Council at its meeting on the 2nd of December 2010
This consultation started at the ende of October. Now it turns out that we residents only had until the 15th of November to provide responses to the NSD in order for these responses to be considered in the Full Council report for December 2nd (We are told that comments and surveys completed after this date will be provided to Councillors before the meeting, but not included in the official report.)
To add insult to injury, the Council has also recently announced a number of ‘road show’ events in 10 different towns across the County to spread news of the NSD. ALL of these events occur after today’s deadline of the 15th, and one of these events is even planned for the 3rd of December, after the Council has made its decision!
You couldn’t make it up!
