Greenham Parish Council Options

[Simon Kirby]

On NewburyToday, news about a new visitor centre for the old Greenham Control Tower, a very big project for the relatively tiny Greenham Parish Council with questionable benefit to parishioners. So I had a bit of a look, and councillor attendance over the last year has been really rather poor. OK, there will inevitably be the odd absence, and sometimes quite a spell of absence if a councillor is unfortunate enough to be seriously unwell, but the average attendance across all councillors is something like two out of three meetings, and that's really pretty dismal. Arthur Johnson, who also sits on Newbury Town Council, managed to attend the last council meeting, but according to the minutes he'd missed the last five (with the minutes only recording apologies for one out of those five absences) and if that's true he'd have been disqualified from office if he hadn't turned up at the last one. At the December meeting there were so few of them in attendance that the meeting couldn't transact any business for an hour while they waited for someone else to turn up and create a quorum.

Lives change of course and people have competing priorities, but I just wonder that some of the Greenham councillors might be better standing down if they're struggling to find the time or commitment.

[Turin Machine]

Or be a swivel eyed loon? "Come in, the waters lovely"!