Decisions by national and local politicians can generate concern or consternation and not just because of party politics. Sometimes the commonsense of the decision is called into question or the competence of the politician(s) making it. Last week, I wrote questioning the decisions of some of our politicians of all parties in providing the necessary resources to support our armed forces. This is an example where I question their competence and observe that some of our MPs appear quite clueless on the matter.
There are many factors influencing the competency to make decisions and one of these is what was a politician doing before they were elected? Next year there will be a CrawleyCouncil election on Thursday 6th May 2010 and possibly a General Election on the same day. In local and national elections, there is a gap analysis for all people who are voted in. One aspect is what level of influence and power did they have in their outside lives on say 5th May 2010 compared to what they then have on 6th May 2010? At a local level, and this is a strong assertion but accurate in my experience, they would usually have a whole lot more influence and power on 6th May.
This poses a challenge around reality checks and training. If you were not a human resources expert on 5th May, you will not be one on 6th May but you could suddenly be in a decision-making role affecting this very area. It is therefore very helpful for newly-elected politicians in particular to have a degree of self-awareness about what they might not know – which could be a great deal. Without that self-awareness, how could we have a commitment to self-development and learning or even see a need to seek advice from professional officers in a local authority? AtCrawley Council, we have a substantial induction programme for new elected members and an on-going commitment to training and learning. We therefore have in place the processes to enable a high quality of decision making.
That takes me on to the accuracy of decision making in the sense of it being sufficiently close to community aspirations as expressed at the ballot box. There are critics of councillors being aligned with political parties but this system does enable a programme to be presented to electors for their approval. Without a political programme in place, a council could become officer-led and nobody elects officers.
Another feature of decision-making is the whip, where a controlling political group makes a majority decision internally in accordance with its programme and then has all of its members support that position. If the internal majority is narrow, the proposal might fall at a Full Council without the whip but it will carry with the whip. This process operates across the country. It is necessary to support a cohesive administration providing political leadership which might otherwise convert into unelected managerial leadership.
Councillor Bob Lanzer, Leader of Crawley Borough Council
22nd July 2009