Opportunity Missed

After the May elections this year, and the dust settled allowing the new batch of councillors to settle in to their new roles, Stuart Brown, CEO of Mendip District Council offered each and every member the opportunity of a "walk about" around the ward, to look at issues first hand and to discuss with the newly elected councillors their vision for the future.

During my walkabout with Mr Brown, I took him around our town centre and highlighted some of the problems we face, and discussed a number of potential ways that we could look at to move the town forward, these we are still working on, however at the same time I spoke at length about the poor relationship between Shepton Mallet Town Council and Mendip District Council and discussed some methods that could be employed to improve matters. Mr Brown agreed during those discussions to attend a Town Council meeting at the earliest opportunity, which after finding a suitable date occurred this week on Tuesday evening. In addition to Stuart Brown, Harvey Siggs, leader of Mendip Council and Cabinet member at County, three elected District Councillors, plus myself as District and County Councillor for the town, the Town Council had direct access to the most important decision makers in the District.

So did the council make the best use of this huge opportunity? In my view absolutely not. Yes there were a few discussions about joint working on various projects and discussions on how the District Council can help to make some of the Town Council's aspirations a reality, but the huge disappointment was there was absolutely no discussion about the future of the town, the Local Development framework and the Local Plan, the most important subjects for the future of the town were barely mentioned. Several members were merely interested in trying to score points on pretty trivial matters, that could be dealt with by officers at a much lower level, but there was very little that warranted the intervention or the influence of the Chief Executive or the Leader or the Council.

I can but hope that this is the start of improved relations between the two local authorities, I know that Mendip wishes a more harmonious existence, there are a great many challenges ahead, the the development of our town foremost among those challenges, I just hope that some of the members of the Town Council grow up, start acting like adults, and put in the work that is required to make Shepton's future secure. I have to say I didn't see much evidence of that on Tuesday evening.