You can’t judge councillors just on meetings they attend (From Worcester News)

You can’t judge councillors just on meetings they attend

8:00am Wednesday 1st July 2009

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SIR – Is the sole criteria for evaluating county councillors now to be based purely on the number of formally minuted meetings they attend, or do not attend, as the case may be?

Are they expected to attend meetings to just sit and listen – for instance, cabinet meetings where most councillors are merely observers and have no debating powers or votes?

Do we not take account of the many informal meetings they attend or other duties performed?

Do we not recognise, or even care, how many parish council meetings they attend, how many site meetings they have with constituents, how much time they spend driving to and fro, or even answering queries by letter or e-mail, or answering telephone calls, often seven days per week?

Methinks that if we judged MPs by the time they actually spent in debates in the House of Commons, their standing would sink to a new low, if that will ever be possible again.

We are very well served at Powick and Callow End, as I suspect is the case across the whole of the county, thank you.

Bob Jenkins,
Callow End.

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