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Health & Safety Committee to be abolished |
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Friday, 09 June 2006 |
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Wednesday 7th saw the (apparent) final meeting of the Council's Health & Safety Sub-committee. This sub-committee brings together councillors, officers, and trade union reps to consider health and safety issues. It has proved a useful forum in what is a very important area. However, this sub-committee is due to be swept away in Cllr Steven Purcell's reform programme and this was approved at Tuesday 30th May's Policy & Resources Committee. The new system will mean all decisions being made at one executive committee from which all opposition councillors will be excluded.
At the Health & Safety Sub-Committee it appeared that the body's abolition was a surprise to the trade union reps. They obviously had not been consulted or even told. Perhaps more surprising was the statement by Committee Chair Cllr George Ryan that he wanted a new committee to replace the old one as he felt it was a necessary group. This suggested that Cllr Ryan also had not been consulted about the Committee's abolition.
All of which leads to the question as to who has been consulted about the new system. It looks increasingly that the process has been driven through by Cllr Purcell and a very few Labour councillors, while other Labour councillors have followed along blindly understanding very little. At the last Education Committee on Thursday 8th, Convenor Cllr Margaret McCafferty was repeatedly asked which items would go to the new executive or scrutiny committees but she seemed no clearer than anyone else as to what was going to happen!
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