BEAUDESERT and Henley Joint Parish Council is once again a Quality Status council, it was announced at a meeting on Monday night—the same meeting that the council made it clear that from now on it would be shutting itself down to the media, writes Philippa Prankard.
Chairman of the parish council, Cllr Les Goodman declared receiving the Quality mark was official proof of the council's strong leadership and high levels of communication.
He then addressed all those who had disparaged the hard work of the council by saying the council was working well and its commitment to Henley was paramount to all that it did.
A council achieves Quality Status if it can demonstrate it has reached the certain minimum standard required in a range of areas including code of conduct, promoting local democracy and citizenship and communication and community engagement.
The parish council was originally awarded Quality Status in June 2005. However, the council was not successful in keeping hold of this status when it was up for renewal in 2009.
The council was approved to resubmit for Quality Status in October last year but could only go through with the resubmission process once parish clerk Jenny Walsh was fully qualified and had passed all .her exams. Ms Walsh achieved this goal in December and all councillors were in favour of pursuing Quality Status apart from Cllr Bill Leech, who thought the council did not deserve it as it failed in its communication. Cllr Leech's criticism was dismissed as "inappropriate" by the National Association of Local Councils which operates the Quality Status scheme.
Cllr Goodman and Ms Walsh then had to endure a 50-minute interview with a panel of NALC representatives who were unanimous in awarding the parish council Quality Status.
At the same meeting councillors adopted a set of revised standing orders for the council. Every council must have a set of standing orders, or rules, for the conduct of its meetings and those of its committees.
And within Henley Parish Council's revised standing orders is a rule that all councillors are prohibited from having any contact with the press either verbally or in written form. This means councillors will no longer be able to contact the press about any matters of interest in the town such as public events or acts of vandalism while members of the press will no longer have the freedom to call up councillors for quotes on Henley matters.
Fittingly, Cllr Chris Milsom voiced his upset at how the flood meeting at the guildhall last Saturday had been publicised. He said articles in the Herald and on the website Henley News OnLine had suggested the event had been organised by the Environment Agency and not, as he said was the case, by the general purposes committee of the parish council.
Cllr Leech, who is also the editor of Henley News Online, spoke for his publication and the Herald when he said both had received a press release from the Environment Agency alerting them to the fact the meeting was taking place and the information contained in it had been published in good faith. The release had mentioned the county, district and parish councils' part in the meeting.
Report by Philippa Mingins - Stratford Herald - Thursday 4th March 2010
No comments:
Post a Comment