Opposition members of Cambridge City Council are unhappy with a proposal to end decision-making in multi-party committees and replace them with a one-party ‘cabinet’.
Liberal Democrat councillors say this plan has been “quietly hatched” by the majority Labour group and could come into force immediately after the city council election on 2 May.
Now the Lib Dems and Green councillors are raising concerns about the change, but the Labour group claims this is a common way of working in other councils around the country, with nine out of 10 councils using this system.
Lib Dem leader Cllr Tim Bick (Market), who has argued against the plan in the working group, said: “This will mean an end to cross-party debate and discussion before decisions, which has been the pattern at the city council, probably ever since it was established. It takes away an equality of voice between individual councillors, which is important even though there is usually one side with a majority.
Scrapping all this is a fundamental change which ought not to be smuggled through to avoid the public getting a proper say about it in the elections.
“We think decisions are stronger for being challenged and tested in debate. Without it, people won’t see their point of view in the mix at the table. That is a serious loss of representative democracy in an often disputatious city, which needs resolution, not ignoring.”
The two main governance structures a council can use are a leader and cabinet model, or a committee model. The leader-cabinet model is the most common form of governance. More than 90 per cent of local authorities use a leader and cabinet model of governance, which allows policies to be reviewed by scrutiny committees and other processes.
In 2022, a council-commissioned Centre for Governance and Scrutiny (CFGS) report was published looking into the effectiveness of the city council’s current governance system. No decision has yet been announced.
Cllr Naomi Bennett (Abbey, Green) said: “It is pretty clear we have major organisational and cultural issues to overcome. Fans of our current governance system are few and far between. However, I don’t think the move to adopt a leader-cabinet model is the right one or goes anywhere near addressing the fundamental problems faced by local government in Cambridgeshire.
“I believe that it will exacerbate residents’ concerns that their local council no longer represents them and the growing feeling of democratic deficit. Voter turnout is dropping and less than half of residents bother to vote in the local elections even now. If half the residents who still bother to vote feel that their chosen party and chosen councillor is excluded from government why would they even bother carrying on?”
Labour council leader Cllr Mike Davey (Petersfield) said: “It is disappointing that the Liberal Democrats continue to disingenuously engage with our positive cross-party process, which is yet to make a formal recommendation to the civic affairs committee. While Labour has been prioritising how to improve democratic engagement and considering what works best for councillors and officers, the Liberal Democrats continue to stick their heads in the sand. As has been outlined by the independent CFGS report, the current system is not working – it is ‘resource heavy and opaque’. Labour believes that residents and council members deserve better.
“We are thoroughly disappointed that the Liberal Democrats have decided to throw cheap political attacks littered with misinformation rather than engage in that process to come up with a model that works for all parties. This clearly demonstrates their lack of a serious plan for our city.’”
