Wednesday night was the “full” meeting of Bury Council - this is the main formal meeting of all 51 councillors that happens about six times a year.

Regrettably this meeting was not the best example of local democracy in action. There was almost no agenda - no recommendations of the Executive Committee, no motions to discuss, no Scrutiny Reports to look at. I thought for once we might all get home at a reasonable time, but I was sadly disappointed. Normally the Liberal Democrat group submit five or six questions to the Council administration at each meeting. This time the Labour Party joined us ‘en masse’ and we had almost three hours of questions to the Council Leader, or to the representatives of Joint Authorities (transport, police, waste etc).

(You’ll note that while Lib Dem councillors ask questions all the time - not just at election time!)

I asked a couple of questions:
- a number of residents had raised concerns with me about the bin collection that took place on Saturday 27th December 2007. Some people noticed that the bin collectors seemed to be “in a hurry”, and that less bins were collected. I was told that in fact nearly 50% extra was collected than on a normal day. This sounds OK, but thinking about it perhaps it is still very low given how busy Christmas is for many people, and that we all effectively miss a bin collection.
- I also asked about how Local Area Partnerships are going to be involved in determining their local plans. I think its very important that the plans for our local areas (Prestwich, Whitefield etc) remain distinct and “local”. I was reassured that they will.

A number of my Lib Dem colleagues also asked questions, these included:
- Cllr Richard Baum asked about the long promised “deep clean” of Prestwich Village precinct. Bizarrely the Executive Member for Environment couldn’t really answer him - but she did admit that the last deep clean was in 2003. This is disgraceful and we will be taking this issue up further.
- Cllr Wilf Davison asked a verbal question about the much rumoured move of Bury FC to the Goshen Fields site. The Council reassured Wilf that that Council had not been involved int he discussions at all and that it was a private matter for the club at the present time.

Last thing for the night was the Labour Party once again showing its confusion and hypocracy over the Congestion Charge proposal. A couple of Labour Councillors asked Richard Baum questions on the Greater Manchester Transport Innovation Fund (TIF) bid to Government as he’s one of the Council’s representative to the Passenger Transport Authority. He put them right, giving the clear answer that its the Labour Government who’s trying to impose an extra congestion tax on people in Greater Manchester, rather than paying for the public transport we need. Details of Richard’s full response is here

Tim