School closures: consequences of approval to go to statutory public consultation

This is time for a sober look at what changes follow a decision by Councillors to approve of the school closure proposals, as they now stand, moving to the phase of statutory public consultation. (Key related articles, just published, are linked at the foot of this piece.)

At the moment, these proposal are no more than internal proposals from Argyll and Bute’s education department to the Council, shared with the public as advance draft information.

They are, just now, the education department’s proposals and the education department is responsible for their strengths and for their weaknesses.

If the Councillors formally approve these proposals for statutory public consultation, they will take formal corporate ownership of the proposals upon themselves.

Responsibility for the nature and ability of the proposals then transfers from the education department to the Council itself, as the governing body referring its own proposals to its electorate.

At that point, the education department can no longer properly be held responsible by anyone, internally or externally, for the inability of the proposals.

It is the responsibility of Councillors, before such approval, to satisfy themselves that the proposals are competent according to the relevant law, that they are evidenced, that they are accurate and that their conclusions accord with the evidence and are sustained by accurate facts.

It is the responsibility of elected Councillors to make sure that papers presented to the public in their name are competent in every respect. The consequences of failure to do so are their responsibility alone.

At the point of putting their individual names to such an approval, the Councillors are saying to the public:

• that formal responsibility for the proposals is now their own
• that, in their considered and informed view, the proposals accord with the law, are accurate and are fit to be sent for statutory public consultation.

The most cowed councillor and the most rabid closure-monkey would be advised to take a step back before putting their name to this responsibility on the basis of these proposal papers.

If enough of them do and these proposals go to formal consultation, it is the Councillors who must speak for these proposals from then on.

In terms of these specific documents approved to go to on to this key stage, we have been unable to discover any legal basis for presenting draft documents for statutory public consultation; nor any legal basis for the conscious use of the statutory consultation period to get draft documents, known to be seriously flawed, improved by the anxious public.

In fact, this last notion – which we have documentary evidence (given in article linked below) to show is, innocently, the current thinking – would be a compound abuse. It would see parent councils and community teams who are campaigning to save their local schools virtually compelled, in defending against closure, to improve and develop the case against them.

However, improving the closure case by changing the documents in response to weaknesses identified by the campaign teams would, legally, require further consultation.

The papers finally used to justify whatever closure decisions are taken must be the papers on which the consultation took place. Otherwise there is a distorting hiatus in the procedure.

If the grounds and the evidence for closure change, then this changed position has to go to public consultation before final decisions can be taken.

And whatever closure decisions are taken must be shown to relate absolutely to the case put and the evidence given in the proposal papers on which the consultation was based..

No other considerations – beyond those contained in the relevant law (Schools Consultation Scotland Act 2010) – may properly be brought into play in making and showing cause for closure decisions.

The moment of truth

The majority of Councillors are honest folk and are not complicit in any scheme to shut schools per se.

Most of them will simply never have thought of the import of what they will actually be doing if they approve these proposals to go to statutory public consultation. They have not understood the nature or the weight of their formal acceptance of ownership and responsibility in this process.

They need to think again. Because if they do this, they stand self-condemned as incompetents in the eyes of their constituents.

Would we vote for anyone who thought this error-strewn guff, astray of the law, was a good basis to close a school and destroy a community – in fact, to close 25 schools and destroy the sustainability not only of communities but of entire territories? Would you?

The all-but insoluble problem Councillors face is that the only people they can get clarification from are those who created the flawed proposals in the first place – and are so unable to understand what they are doing as to have left virtually all of the flaws in place at the second attempt – with some new errors added.

Thursday 25th November 2010 will be a day when Councillors representing the various areas in Argyll and Bute take responsibility for their actions – one way or the other – or not.

The statutory public meetings

If the Councillors opt to approve these proposals for public consultation, they will have to be prepared to defend every syllable of the proposals themselves, off the cuff, on any occasion they are challenged on them. Having approved them and taken ownership of them, there will be no buck to pass.

The procedure at the statutorily required public meetings on each proposal paper will have to see the Councillors fronting the event. Their proposals will be the subject for debate and they must speak for them.

There is  no reason why they should not have education department staff present as advisers – in the background. If they are seen to put words in their principals’ mouths, the Councillors lack of foundation knowledge in approving these things for formal consultation will be evident to all.

The formal necessity is that the presentation of the platform party and the mode of conduct of the public meeting should reflect the procedural reality  – that these will be proposals presented by the Council as manifest in its elected officers.

New articles linked from this matter are:

• School closures: the intention to send flawed documents to public consultation
• School closures: voting procedure or 25th November may not be decided until that morning