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What a Con

The current administration has been manipulating council panels to suit their own ends, according to the leader of Bournemouth’s Independent group.

Cllr Anne Rey says the route for the closure of Townsend School was smoothed by fiddling with the Investing in People Overview Panel (IPOP).

“It was a proposal to send to cabinet a proposal to shut the school,” she said, “and two of the Tories that would of voted not to close it were replaced by two Tories that voted to close it. Which had never been done before.”

She also cited the removal of Liberal Democrat Cllr Roger West from the Sustainable Environment Overview Panel – when a vote of no confidence was passed in his chairmanship at a full council meeting.

"People who voted weren’t even on the panel,” said Cllr Rey, “so that was another set-up job."

"That’s what happens when you’ve got a very large majority running the Town Hall," she added, "it’s not good politics, and that’s what makes people very wary of politicians I think, local or national.”

But council and Conservative leader Stephen MacLoughlin said: “The membership of the Conservative representation on that panel [IPOP] and indeed other panels is a matter for the Conservative group.

“The one area though where I did intervene was on the Scrutiny Panel,” he said, “where I felt that the ward councillors who serve on that Scrutiny Panel were so embroiled in the issues and the emotions of everything surrounding Townsend School that some of them couldn’t stand back and take an independent view of the issue that was being scrutinised.

“But the change of membership didn’t actually change the outcome of the recommendation.”

He also expressed disappointment about Cllr West’s removal as a panel chairman.