ACTION TAKEN BY RESIDENTS GROUP ON STAFFING

The Residents Group (Councillors Paul Andrews and David Clarkson) have proposed on more than one occasion that there should be a staffing sub-committee, which should classify all Council posts as either automatically replaceable, not to be replaced without the agreement of the committee or not to be replaced, when the postholder resigns.

 This was the system that operated at Ryedale House before 1996

Click here for details of this scheme

Every time this proposal has been made, the Council has rejected these proposals. They say members should trust the officers and not seek to “micro-manage” the Council.

We take the view that this issue has nothing to do with trusting or not trusting the officers: it is simply a matter of good house keeping.. Local Government is Labour intensive – the main cost is staffing. So we say that, if elected members don’t take an interest in staffing numbers and structure, then the elected members have abdicated much of the responsibility for controlling the Council’s expenditure.