onionbagblog

A most useful morning spent in the fine company of @SophiaLooney, the Divisional Director of Equalities, Policy and Performance for @lambeth_council. A series of my usual sneering steering tweets, questioning the validity of the #lambethcoop Citizen’s Commission, led to the very kind invite from the council officer to come in for a chat.

Our chat was enjoyable, useful and even *shhh* co-operative. It was a shame however that it took an apolitical council officer to be the first person involved in the whole PR project to be able to actually try and explain and justify what the hell is happening with the much lauded Citizen’s Commission.

The premise was Everything You Always Wanted to Know About #lambethcoop But Was Afraid to Ask. The sub-plot was please come in and tell us why you think the Citizen’s Commission, with zero citizens, has got off to such a poor start.

@SophiaLooney very kindly agreed to my request to record our chat. I asked her to ignore the @audioboo app, enjoy a friendly chat and with the right of reply / deletion of audio come the end of our conversation. Come the conclusion, and I was pleased to have the confirmation to keep the recording on the public record.

It was a fascinating dialogue, understanding how a council officer implements political policy. @SophiaLooney’s enthusiasm for the #lambethcoop project cannot be denied.

Please do listen to the @audioboo below - I guarantee it will take less time than actually reading through the fifty plus page of the #lambethcoop White Paper policy document.

The team of officers that report into @SophiaLooney have been responsible for writing the White Paper, managing the online and offline process of feedback.

It was confirmed that the citizen engagement (talking with the Little People) would take place through until November. The main form of feedback is to be the preferred Nu Labour methodology of a focus group.

The folly of such a neurotic approach to pleasing all of the people, but only during election time, is well documented as being one of the downfalls of the Nu Labour project on a national level. It seems that the lessons still haven’t been learnt here on a local level in Lambeth, where the Nu Labour project is still carrying on regardless.

@SophiaLooney confirmed that “about 300 residents” have been invited to take part in the focus group. I know little of the methodology, but I hope that this 0.01% of the population in Lambeth returns the right answers that will be beneficial to the remaining residents.

Road shows are also going to be rolled out around the borough. The Lambeth Show will be a strong point for engagement. Just make sure you talk to the #lambethcoop people before you hit the Chucklehead Cider tent.

Or maybe not…

The “bicycle billboard” idea is also intriguing, if not slightly bonkers. A bloke on a bicycle will be whizzing around the borough with a billboard all about the #lambethcoop attached. As residents, we are then invited to follow the procession.

It all sounds like the Pied Piper dancing a merry jig around the mean streets of Lambeth. I’d be weary if the bonkers bicycle billboard bloke takes a wrong turn towards the river Effra.

But what of the Citizen’s Commission itself?

@SophiaLooney agreed that the title is misleading. Co-op Commission would be more appropriate, given the current membership of the Commission, consisting of three @LambethLabour cabinet members.

This was a key point, and one that I wanted to press with @SophiaLooney. She announced that “three other members” have been invited, two of whom “are in jobs related to what we are trying to achieve.”

Five hundred and eighty expressions of interest have also been sent out. I was hopeful here that the 0.01% representation with the declaration of interests was about to leap by a further whopping 0.01%.

I’m afraid not - “academics, civil servants and think tanks, all from around the country,” have been asked to join in the co-op conversation, all ahead of the participation of local Lambeth residents.

I explained to @SophiaLooney that I expressed an interest via email to take part in the consultation. The “volume of email that we have received” is the reason why I haven’t heard back apparently.

But hey hoe - here I was, sitting in the office of a high ranking Lambeth civil servant, and being provided with inside information about #lambethcoop that no politician has yet been brave enough to declare. Co-operation between residents and council officers does exist if you cut out the middleman. Which more or less sums up what #lambethcoop is about.

Elsewhere and I was alarmed to hear: “a Citizen’s Commission meeting *may* be held in public.”

Note the singular description; note the non-committal approach to actually carrying this out.

As for the absolute power of the Citizen’s Commission, @SophiaLooney confirmed that it has no real power, but only the brief to write a report for the @lambeth_council cabinet to consider.

Seeing as though the Citizen’s Commission *is* the @lambeth_council cabinet, then once again, why bother?

Meanwhile @LambethLibdems and the Lambeth Tories have yet to be brought into the process. So not quite as co-operative as the Nu Labour politicians would like us to believe.

Ignoring the fact that #lambethcoop appears to have been put together on the back of a fag packet a whiteboard (naughty Jase, *very* naughty,) I still can’t see past the whole exercise as nothing but a PR exercise in giving the impression of more citizen involvement.

@SophiaLooney and her team have done a fine job in setting up the mechanisms for consultation. The actual implementation remains with the politicians - which more or less has been my point all along.

We elect local politicians to take care of the messy business of balancing the books with council services. They are rewarded well for this, and get to engage in a micro local level whilst acting out their political fantasies.

I have no issue with politicians making decisions on my behalf. That is what I voted for on May 6th. The problem is when politicians attempt to use a PR #lambethcoop smokescreen to implements cuts, and pass on the blame of a withdrawal of public services on to the Little People.

This seems to be the exact situation being put forward by @cllrstevereed [unblocked - hurrah!] at the launch event for #coop14 at the weekend, the fortnight of debate regarding all things co-operative within the country.

With a big heads up to @southlondonpost, a video of the speech given by the leader of @lambeth_council has now appeared online.

One minute in and Michael Stephenson, the General Secretary of the Co-operative party states:

“Business growth is helping us develop new grounds for co-operation.”

Its certainly a buzz word this co-op lark. It has deep rooted and well-intentioned historical objectives. Sadly it now seems that if you add the co-op prefix to any capitalist model, then you are excused for allowing big business to control the agenda, rather than the citizens.

@cllrstevereed talks in his address about giving local people skips and spades, a bunch of community offenders and getting local people to transform a derelict plot of land.

Fine, but there’s a huge leap of trust, accountability and responsibility from the council washing its hands of local urban regeneration, to getting citizen’s to run front line services.

Stephenson concludes by shaking his fist and stating:

“For me, the big fear is people who don’t share our values politically, using what we believe in as a cheap way to justify cutting back public services.”

Ouch.

I hope the politician sitting to his, um, left was listening to this carefully.

Many, many thanks to @SophiaLooney for kindly inviting me in. As a public servant it appears that she is doing her job rather well. It’s such a shame that the policy that she is being asked to implement is all about delegation of duty, rather than fairness, accountability and responsibility.“