By BRIAN TILLEY brian.tilley@hexham-courant.co.uk

Last updated at 11:33, Monday, 01 September 2008

TYNEDALE councillors have been branded “irresponsible” for seeking to increase the number of councillors on the new Northumberland unitary council by almost a third.

They voted to ask the Boundary Committee to sanction a jump in the number of councillors from 67 to 99 – as well as wanting to create five area committees instead of the proposed three.

It was also suggested that councillors should be paid an extra £2,500 to employ administrative staff to carry out routine work.

The recommendation by the council’s health and culture scrutiny committee was due to be considered by the council’s cabinet last night, but it has already been condemned by a member of the new council’s Liberal Democrat administration.

Hexham’s Coun. Derek Kennedy said on Wednesday: “Raising the number of councillors to 99 would be totally irresponsible.

“The council has got to make efficiency savings of £55 million over the next five years, and this dangerous notion would drive a coach and horses straight through that before we start.

“An additional 32 councillors would cost the taxpayers an additional £800,000 per year when travelling expenses, allowances and responsibility payments were taken into account.”

The debate arose because the Boundary Committee has already decided to investigate the way the new authority will operate – even though it does not officially come into being until April next year.

Councillors are being asked for their views on how many councillors there should be, and how many area committees should be created to cover the council’s huge area – which is bigger than some European countries.

Coun. Kennedy told the meeting that the Lib-Dem minority administration favoured the creation of three area committees, because it seemed the logical way to split the county into manageable but cost-effective units.

He said: “ We know there were six district councils, but we have to forget history, and start with a clean sheet.

“It’s logical to have committees in the rural north and west of the county, and another in the urban south east, and we feel they can do the job.”

He acknowledged creating five area committees would bring the council closer the people, but pointed out they would be too expensive to run and service,

“Doing it our way, we can say money to devolve something realistic down to parish and community groups.”

He said the timing of the Boundary Committee’s intervention was “ridiculous” because so many details of the way the new council would operate were still up in the air.

“We have a lot of new councillors, and have no chief executive, but we will have to make it work.”

His views on the timing of the investigation were shared by Coun. Bill Garrett, of Prudhoe, who said: “The Lib-Dem administration has inherited a debacle, which was completely ill thought out, and now we are expected to make comments on things we know very little about.

“I think I know my own electorate pretty well after over 30 years, but I haven’t a clue about the details of other people’s wards in Tynedale, let alone in Blyth, Wansbeck or Berwick.

“We have been out in an impossible position.”

He pointed out that many people still mourned the loss of the five councils which went to make up Tynedale in 1974, and the new Morpeth-based council would be even more remote.

He said: “It is too remote, and will continue to be too remote, and we have to make the best of a bloody bad job.”

Coun. Colin Horncastle, of Allendale, said it was wrong to try to divide Northumberland into three, linking areas which had no common links.

He said: “You cannot draw lines on a map for administrative convenience; that’s what they did with Africa in colonial times, and you end up with people from different backgrounds murdering each other.”

On the question of increasing the number of councillors, Coun. Horncastle felt that while councillors would have a heavy workload in the new council, more councillors was not necessarily the answer.

He suggested paying existing councillors an additional £2,500 to pay for administrative assistance to deal with minor matters.

Coun. Paul Macdonald, of Ovingham, pointed out that if a councillor was in full time employment, and was also expected to work up to 21 hours per week on council business, it would be a breach of the European Working Time Directive.

He said: “Councillors are entitled to a life outside the council, and the present number of councillors is not enough.”

Coun. Tony Reid, of Prudhoe, reminded members than in the early days of unitary negotiations, a bid had been made by the Labour administration to increase the number of councillors to 134, but this had been rejected out of hand by the Government.

The committe considered a number of options on the number of councillors, including leaving things as they are.

However, it was finally agreed to opt for 99 “as a basis for negotiation”.

First published at 15:39, Thursday, 28 August 2008
Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk