“Get rid of the 'closed shop' culture - reduce the number of Winsford Town Council meetings from 62 down to 12 plus an AGM.”

Yet again, the origins of a WSotE pledge can clearly be traced back to Chief Rodent, Cllr Simon Boone.

A post on the Rodent Army's Facebook page last January¹⁾ noted:

"A Parish/ Town Council has the same role and can operate legally with 3 meetings
 a year. So why have our local labour councillors increased the amount of 
 meetings, from 12 to 62 a year."

It may not be obvious, but reducing the number of council meetings to just 12 (plus the AGM) means doing away with committee meetings, which of course is what the other 50 meetings are.

It would be self-contradictory then, for WSotE to claim they are “more transparent”. How could they be, whilst simultaneously reducing the number of meetings in which the public can interact?

Yet on the 28th of June, this is exactly what WSotE claimed - as Cllr Wayne Fletcher explained²⁾:

“Winsford Salt Of The Earth councillors have stopped the committee structure that was in place, and replaced it with one full committee”

He went on to promise that WSotE would improve transparency:

“There will be no more short council meetings where handfuls of committee agendas are proposed with no explanation to the public.”

A bold claim which, unfortunately for Cllr Fletcher, does not itself hold up to scrutiny. It is understandable that a short full council meeting might give the impression of a lack of public debate, however this was not the case, with much debate simply occurring during committee meetings, all of which were open to the public.

The recommendations of the committees would be discussed at WTC Full Council sessions, and whilst Cllr Boone is correct in saying that these discussions were often brief, this did not mean that the matter had been set in stone at committee, and both councillors and members of the public could still comment even at this later stage. It is perhaps ironic then, that independent councillors Welch and Mellor rarely attended committee meetings, nor did they have much to say at full council regarding agenda items arising from these, despite having had ample opportunity.

Furthermore, it simply isn't possible for the public to hear about all council business in a single monthly meeting. Winsford is not a small village, and WTC is not a small village council.

Under the previous council a typical Town Council meeting, of which there would be about 6 each month, lasted between 1 and 1.5 hours, so replacing these with a single monthly meeting would require the Full Council meeting to be between 6 and 9 hours (with no breaks! -ed) in length - certainly something that would hinder both public debate and accessibility.

Cllr Richard Mault also took to Facebook, contradicting his colleague to declare that the issue wasn't in fact “closed-shop culture”, but rather that the previous system was simply too costly³⁾. He gave no evidence to support his claim, as usual.

Regardless of who is correct, by Cllr Fletcher promising that WSotE were to hold a finance working group and “further working groups going forward”, WSotE had already gone back on their promise to hold only 12 meetings a year.

WSotE also failed to realise in time that fulfilling the promises in this pledge would require a time consuming overhaul of the WTC standing orders.

The end result is that WSotE have added an events working group which does nearly the same as the previous community committee. They have added an open spaces and assets working group which is nearly the same as the old open spaces committee and seems to be meeting monthly. On the 16th of Oct they eventually did hold the first of what we now know to be a monthly finance working group that meets separately from full council. All this looks suspiciously like committee meetings by another name - and an admission that their “bold new ideas” are really nothing more than a rebrand.

So far, there has been an overall reduction in the number of meetings since WSotE took the helm, but after seven months there have now been 19, and their frequency appears to be increasing over time. Even if the frequency does not increase further, WSotE are now committed to over 44 meetings a year.

Contrary to the promise made by Cllr Fletcher, WSotE led full council meetings offer little explanation or debate on agenda items, and less still on any matters arising from their working groups committees. Furthermore, looking at just how long part b is debated and how few agenda items it contains, it seems that WSotE debate a lot more behind closed doors than preceeding town councils!

While this pledge clearly hasn't been kept, and must therefore be a FAIL it is mildly reassuring that WSotE appear to have realised that more one meeting a month is needed in order to run Winsford Town Council!