Cllr Sheila Magnall followed the House of Commons speaker in making a very competent debut at Wednesdays full council meeting at the town hall, maintaining a firm control of proceedings and not afraid to make judgments. Clearly the lady is not to be messed with!

However it is a shame she is operating in an apparently ever diminishing democratic environment at the Town hall.

To recap the Conservatives have made it more difficult for members of the public to ask questions at council, they have limited questions from councillors at Full Council and restricted questions at Executive meetings, they require further notice of questions in writing. On top of that they are in my opinion trying to restrict the scrutiny commissions scrutiny of policy and limiting the scrutiny commissions work programme of items they may wish to scrutinise. And if that wasn’t bad enough if an item is scrutinised, any recommendations to teh Executive tend to be ignored - at least if opposition members have had a significant input.

We desperately need to open up our democracy and re-engage with members of the public. The public we serve!

It’s time our democratic decision making and policy review structures were completely reviewed, if necessary with the aid of independant advisors or members.