Some Answers Over Executive Board Postponement

After local political events last week, Wrexham.com queried the suspension of meeting and if Councillors would be returning allowances.

Last week saw ten Councillors resign from the local Labour grouping – full report here. The actions resulted in a postponement of the Executive Board meeting due yesterday, and a statement from the Council’s Chief Executive which essentially told members to get on with their jobs.

At the time we asked why the Council is unable to function normally for this period, considering all Councillors remain in their jobs and it is their personal political alignment that is changing.

Today Wrexham Council told us: “The council is functioning normally, council meetings such as Scrutiny committees and Task and Finish groups continue to take place as scheduled. Services continue to be delivered, councillors continue to undertake their ward duties.

“The only alteration has been the rescheduling of the September Executive Board.”

We asked if allowances will be returned for the period where councillors are unable or unwilling to convene usual meetings, and were told “This is a matter for individual councillors but apart from Executive Board it is business as usual.”

We put forward queries to the Chief Executive asking if she believed the suspension of the Executive Board meeting is the correct choice, if there was any concern that the outcome of recent events may eventually result in a situation such as occurred on Anglesey where the Welsh Government stepped in. Both were responded with a ‘No Comment’, however the queries were placed before the issuing of a more lengthy statement which covered a formal response to the resignations.

One final query we made was asking ‘who was the actual decision maker in terms of cancelling the Exec Board meeting?’

We were told: “A majority of the Board Members agreed to the rescheduling of this meeting.”

There is an ongoing thread on our Wrexham.com Forums with a wide range of debate, reaction and questions being posed not only on the resignations but a wider discussion on local politics in Wrexham – you can read and take part by clicking here…