Secret Meeting with No Secrets (David Rendel)

Secret Meeting with No Secrets

October 21, 2009 10:06 AM

Members of the Press and Public were not allowed to attend a 'secret' briefing held at 6pm last night. Yet only two hours later the full contents of the briefing were disclosed to the Press, when copies of all the slides used were handed round.

"This is secrecy gone mad" commented David Rendel, one of the two Liberal Democrat Councillors present at the briefing. "Before the briefing began we called for it to be opened up to the press. But all in vain. Then within a couple of hours the council had decided that there were no secrets in the presentation at all."

Ironically the briefing was in preparation for a debate on whether the Council's Scrutiny Commission should investigate the way Newbury's Town Centre Partnership (TCP) was run. This proposal had followed news that a number of TCP members were unhappy about the way in which they felt the TCP took decisions in secret.

"We made the point" said Mr Rendel, "that the best way to dispel fears of over-secretive decision-making was to have a meeting at which the TCP could describe openly to the scrutiny Commission and to the Press and Public just how they planned to involve the public in future. To hold a briefing for this debate in secret, despite all our pleas to open it up, was only going to redouble the concerns about secretiveness. Once again the Council has shot itself in the foot."