Dear Editor,
The Minshull Vernon and District Parish Council (which covers the Parishes of Leighton, Minshull Vernon and Woolstanwood in South Cheshire) has supported the criticism of the Cheshire East Council by the Pickmere Parish Council.
The Pickmere Chairman has slated Cheshire East for failing to respond to planning and highways concerns, saying it keeps the contact details of officers who could help ‘essentially secret’.
Simon Read told the full meeting of the Borough Council: “I’m sorry to say, in Pickmere, your Council has a very, very poor reputation.”
Minshull Vernon and District Parish Council agrees with those comments.
The Borough Council is anonymous and works with a silo mindset.
The Borough Council’s response to complaints is often desultory and/or perfunctory. At times they are simply dismissive.
Instead of tackling a problem head on and getting it done, they say: “Well this bit is Highways, this bit is Estates etc”
There is no co-ordination between departments, you are often communicating with faceless, anonymous people and very little gets done.
Parish Councils and residents grow increasingly annoyed because they get the bureaucratic runaround and the problem they are reporting just gets worse.
The whole culture of Cheshire East needs to change drastically and quickly.
Problems need to be dealt with as a whole not in little bits. The emphasis should be on ‘action this day’.
Giving the residents the bureaucratic runaround needs to stop.
Council staff need to be far more accessible, visible and known.
Residents pay more in Council Tax each year……. but see what in return?
Vital services in decline.
This cannot continue.
Yours faithfully
Cllr. Brian Silvester
Minshull Vernon and District Parish Council’s Communication Officer
Brian. You are right. I raised a question on 23rd January asking how the £4200 each Councillor could spend on their Wards had been spent. I support this idea as it helps local communities get things done.
I was told it came under FOI and that the information I requested was not held by CEC. If every Councillor spent this allowance it would cost some £344,400 and they say this information is not held. Surely there must be some financial controls. I asked for it to go to Internal Review and was told their aim was to reply by 22nd March. This they duly did only to tell me that it has been extended to 20th April. Internal Reviews are carried out by Officers. You can’t make it up or can you?