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Islington Greens have discovered more evidence that ward partnerships are not working effectively and are excluding residents from participation in important financial decision making.
Far from improving democratic accountability, as suggested by Cllr Convery (“Claims ward partnerships rarely meet up” – 20th Jan Tribune), ward partnership meetings are being poorly advertised, excluding those residents who are not chummy with local councillors.
The St Georges’s Ward Partnership met on Tuesday 7th February, but many residents were unaware of it.
Local resident Fran Bury said “I was shocked to discover that Islington Council was unaware that my ward partnership (St George’s) was meeting the following night – the information was not on the website, and nor was anyone at Contact Islington able to provide any information. Far from being fully advertised, it almost felt as if people didn’t want us to find out about these meetings”
“When I later discovered that this meeting was being convened in order to select a panel of residents to distribute over £33,000 in the local community, I was really horrified. How can this be called democratically accountable?”
Caroline Russell , of Islington Green Party said “There are lots of benefits from moving to a ward level structure for local accountability, but it is essential that these are genuinely accessible to everyone in the ward. Partnership meetings should be clearly advertised, and not only through councillor mailing lists otherwise they are open to the accusation of being a stitch up.”
In the event, the meeting in St George’s was attended by around 30 residents, and the meeting agreed a transparent process for selecting the panel to distribute the funding, and, more importantly, for ensuring the panel consults effectively with local residents.
However, both Councillors and officers at the meeting acknowledged that more needed to be done to ensure all meetings are properly advertised and open to all residents interested in influencing decisions affecting their local area. At present, the new ward level system receives no officer support, leaving councillors with a substantial administrative burden on top of their case work, committee work and day jobs.
Describing how this situation could be improved, Ms Russell added “Residents at the partnership meeting suggested a number of low cost ideas for ensuring more people know about and can attend meetings in future. However, these will not be sufficient to ensure meetings are organised well in advance, properly prepared for and promoted. This requires dedicated support, whether from officers, or a small pot of funding to enable the partnership to employ a local person to co-ordinate the panel.
“Without this support these meetings will be just as Cllr Convery described, “attended by a narrow coterie of affluent, articulate people in the know”. Islington Greens would like to see these meetings as genuinely transparent, open to all and enabling all members of the community to contribute if they wish.”
