Where's the job specs?

The Royally Rotten Borough spends bucket loads of your cash every day, and some of that goes on councillor allowances. Seasoned readers of these pages will know your local councillors are paid handsome allowances for doing pretty much bugger-all and so long as they toe the party line and dont cause too much fuss, even if they make a complete hash of whatever it is they have to do, will continue to receive the cash month in month out.

Even the so called opposition, the likes of Labour and Glib-Dems get some cash (although to be fair the Glib Dems do want more).

In the real world, that is outside of the council, anyone in employment will know that you cant just expect the pay check to appear once a month every month, whether you turn up or not or if you actually fulfill the expectations of your employers and satisfactorily complete your tasks.

In other councils across the country they publish portfolios of councillors with extra responsibilities because if they are being paid up to £50,000 from the public purse its only right the public have access to a set of targets, or points on which to measure if the incumbent is up to the job.

For example, in one such eastern council the cabinet member for a civil society has a published portfolio that says they will attend external meetings and actually states what these meetings are, who they are with and how often they take place. It gives targets, to reduce anti social behaviour, improve teams removing graffiti and provides for action against litter.

The Rotten Boroughs own RockFM, the Leader in Waiting, is our Cabinet Member for Civil Society and all the website says for him is this:

The Council is always looking to improve the services it offers. It is Cllr Feilding-Mellen's job to keep everyone on their toes in the search for continuous improvement across all the Council’s services, including those delivered on the Council’s behalf by private companies and voluntary organisations. Cllr Feilding-Mellen also manages the regeneration and community safety portfolios.




In other words, nothing, This is just plain nonsense as it doesnt give you any idea what he has to do as Civil Society Cabinet Member, doesnt give you any metrics on which to judge his performance nor justify his £45,000 per year. It does give his political paymaster however all the cards to hand out patronage.

So the Dame calls on the council to produce proper portfolios for each cabinet member that clearly explains

• What the definition of their role is
• Exactly what is expected of them
• How they are expected to deliver it
• Quantify why it should attract the salary level it does

...after all, its not THEIR money its YOURS.