Exhibited with kind permission of the Gazette and Herald

By Claire Metcalfe

"WE are being driven out" – that's the feeling of Ryedale District Council staff caught in a battle over frontline services. A crunch vote three weeks ago saw plans to merge the authority's revenues and benefits services with Hambleton District Council thrown out.

But now workers, who believe the current system is the best one for customers, are dismayed to find that an attempt to overturn this decision is being made.

Coun Robert Wainwright and Coun Brian Cottam will propose a motion at tomorrow's council meeting asking for a re-think on the issue. Their motion says the vote was taken "without the full understanding and knowledge of the implications of the decision".

They state: "We believe it to be in the best interests of the council, staff and the community that the decision be re-considered." But Paul Hunt, branch secretary of the public service union Unison in Ryedale, said this gives the impression that the first decision was simply "the wrong one".

"Presumably, had the go-ahead been given, the partnership agreement would have been signed immediately and thus made irreversible, " he said.

"This suggests to staff that the attempt to rescind the decision is a consequence of the decision made not being the one sought by officers, rather than being the result of flaws in the decision-making process." He said the move had sent shockwaves through Ryedale House about the future of the authority, and other councillors expressed alarm.

Coun Paul Andrews, who opposed the partnership, said he thought it was "quite unacceptable and unnecessary". He added: "Quite honestly, if this matter is debated again I don't think the council's standing orders are worth the paper they're written on." He said the plan ignored advice from consultants and was a threat to homeless people in Ryedale.

"If staff who feel the new system is not going to be as good as the old one are right, then people who lose their homes are going to be prejudiced because they may not get interim money before summons from their landlord, which is a big problem in Ryedale." He said it was "extremely surprised" that Coun Cottam, who is chairman of Yorkshire Housing Association, should be proposing the move.

Coun John Clark said: "If we made the first decision without full understanding and knowledge, where is the information we've had since then?

What further information should we be considering before the debate?" He said that Ryedale District Council was being removed "barrowload of bricks by barrowload of bricks", without any public consultation. Coun Cottam said: "I don't consider I'm doing any of our Yorkshire Housing Association tenants any harm at all, in actual fact I'm attempting to do some good for the council taxpayers of Ryedale and I want to see equal or better services on benefits than we have now." He said he believed the move would give more depth to the service, with better sick cover, and that the cost of putting in place new technology if the council stays independent could be "quite considerable".

RDC's chief executive, Harold Mosley, said that the first part of the motion asked for the authority's standing orders to be lifted for the matter to be revisited.

"There has got to be an agreement to suspend the council's rules in order to reconsider the revenues and benefits issue, " he said. "The rule is that the council can't reconsider a decision within six months of it being made, so that is why the standing order would have to be lifted.

''We need to vote on it before six months because we've got deadlines to meet. This has been done once before by the council." Paul Hunt added: "There is a growing feeling that perhaps what really underlies the current situation is the pursuit of a Whitehall-driven dogmatic agenda rather than the question of whether or not these particular partnership proposals are right for Ryedale.

"I suggest the staff at Ryedale employed to deliver revenues and benefits services care and know a lot more about these services than those in Whitehall who are offering large sums of taxpayers money to induce local authorities to test out the latest fad."