School closures: voting procedure for 25th November may not be decided until that morning

We are in possession of documentary evidence to show that there is as yet no agreement as to exactly how the voting procedure for Councillors to follow at the meeting on 25th November will work. (Key related articles, just published, are linked at the foot of this piece.)

We understand that a decision on this is unlikely to be taken until the morning of the day of the meeting itself.

It is also clear that this is a major issue for individual councillors. They will need to consider carefully whether the proposals stand up to being taken into corporate ownership for presentation to the electorate for public consultation.

If they feel able to stand over the closure proposals in their current state – which would be a brave decision – they could face the invidious position of having to use one vote to retain one local school as opposed to another.

What are the options for voting on whether or not to approve sending the proposals to statutory public consultation?

Councillors could be asked to:

• vote on the entire suite of closure proposals as a single entity
• vote on each proposal paper – which contains one or more schools for closure, along with a receiving school
• vote on each single school proposed for closure or for receiving pupils as transferring from closed schools

One would assume that the fact that the voting procedure is nowhere near settled would be of real concern within the Council.

Not so.

We have been authoritatively told of a senior councillor expressing absolute unconcern at the situation and looking forward to the eventual desired outcome at the end of consultation with alarming insouciance in repeating that ‘the ends justify the means’.

In our less pragmatic book, the reverse is the case: the means validate the ends.

Such a chaotic process speaks to the public of an organisation and a management which has no stable procedures and is operating at the level of hoping to hit on whichever wheeze will serve the purpose of the moment.

Council Leader Dick Walsh is a master of this sort of stroke – but he needs better back up, He should never be put in a position to have to resort to pantomime acts like this. One of the Executive Directors must be the responsible procedural wonk.

Smoke, mirrors, back room deals and rabbits flourished from shabby hats simply will not do.

Any attempt to repeat this sort of stunt in a last minute flash-bomb of a procedural announcement will remove the last shreds of credibility from the council in what has been an ill-judged response to  disastrously unable proposals handed to it by its own education department.

The public need to know exactly how the voting will work and they need to know on Monday 22nd November, not during the actual meeting on 25th – for those few who manage to gain admittance.

Related articles now published:

• School closures: consequences of approval to go to statutory public consultation
• School closures: the intention to send flawed documents to public consultation