A councillor has accused Kingston Council of “trying to stop genuine scrutiny of decisions”, after she was barred from speaking at a committee meeting last night [January 8].

Green Party councillocr, Sharron Sumner, was not on the panel for the scrutiny meeting debating the expansion of Burlington Junior School, but sat in the public gallery.

When the panel voted against the Conservative Chair’s motion to allow members of the public to speak on the motion, she asked to speak as an elected representative.

However, the Liberal Democrat councillors, who dominated the panel, also voted not to allow her to speak.

She told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that she only originally attended the meeting to observe after a similar expansion happened at her son’s school.

She said: “When I found out that the lead petitioner, James Giles, was being prevented from speaking I then asked to exercise my right under Local Government Law to speak at the meeting, which I was refused.

“Within all my experience of following the council, that has never ever happened. 

“I was really quite shocked,” she said.

“It just reconfirmed everything that I thought following on from all their changes to the constitution. They are trying to stop genuine scrutiny of their decisions.

“At every point and turn they are trying to deny people the right of scrutiny and to properly hold councillors to account. 

“If they are not going to let the public hold them to account, then I’m sorry, but who else can do it but an opposition councillor?

“It’s almost like an elected dictatorship. Residents are only allowed an opinion once every four years.”

Conservative councillors brought in the public petition against the expansion for review after nine opposition councillors signed it.

They vowed to use this mechanism to retain call-ins, after the Liberal Democrat administration increased the number of public signatures required for a community call in from 100, to more than 2,000 last year.

The Conservative members of the panel voted in favour of letting Cllr Sumner speak, but were defeated.

Cllr Ian George, Opposition Spokesperson for Engagement and Continuous Learning, said: “It’s standard practice that if a councillor comes along to any meeting they are afforded the right to speak. I think we have set a very dangerous precedent quite frankly. As well as stopping residents they are going to stop councillors from being able to speak. 

“If both have spoken it would have taken just six minutes. If that had happened and could have helped us to better understand the decision, then we should be grateful for that. 

“We wasted more than those six minutes on petty arguments.”

Deputy Leader of the Council, Malcolm Self was also in the public gallery.

Speaking on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, he said: “The residents had an opportunity to attending the Children and Adult’s Care and Education Committee in November. My understanding is that they didn’t use that to speak against the expansion. At that point they apparently showed no interest in it. “

Regarding the decision to prevent Cllr Sumner from speaking, he said: “The panel decided, not by unanimous decision, not to allow her to speak. I’m really not able to comment on that. That was their decision and their judgement. It would be wrong, I think, for me to say ‘oh yes, she should have been allowed to speak’, or that it was correct for her not to. They made their judgement and when you make a decision at a committee you are not obliged to provide a reason why you went a particular way on each decision. So I can’t comment on that.”

Cllr Self went on to accuse Cllr Sumner of “aggressive” behaviour when she decided to film and question Liberal Democrat councillors during an adjournment of the meeting.

The footage was later posted on Twitter.

“I thought it was absolutely, 100 per cent out of order. You cannot go up to another person in a public place, put your phone camera in their face and start talking to them aggressively. I think it was bullying and I think it brought the council into disrepute,” he said.

He added he has since made a complaint to the council’s monitoring officer.

Cllr Sumner said: “This is nothing more than a publicity stunt designed to deflect public scrutiny from the Lib Dems’ appalling behaviour last night where the Lib Dems prevented local people from having their say on the expansion of Burlington School and shut down opposition councillors.

“They’re running scared from people holding them to account for their ineffectual leadership and poor decision making.

“When an administration routinely stops residents from challenging them and speaking at meetings that duty then falls onto opposition councillors. I will continue to hold this administration for the unprincipled and illiberal decisions they make.”

Despite the heated debate, the panel unanimously voted to reject the request for a call-in, allowing the original decision to approve the expansion to proceed to implementation.

Cllr Self accused the Conservatives of “wasting money” on the procedure, which the Liberal Democrats have previously claimed costs £5,000 for each call-in.

Conservative Cllr George said: “We had a good look at it but decided not to send it back because it is clear that the council is not going to change their mind.

“However, part of the conclusion was to highlight the lack of background information that was available when the local consultation took place. If nothing else I think that was very worthwhile. The whole point of scrutiny is to air things to show that they are taken correctly, and that is exactly what we did last night.”

He said claims that the process cost £5,000 were “baloney” and that it was a “figure plucked out of air to try and put off people from calling anything in and scrutinising anything”.

“How do you spend £5,000 on it? We’ve got the hall that’s sitting there empty, we’ve got councillors who don’t get paid any extra to attend, we’ve got officers who presumably take time off anyway. You’ve got the same information there as when they took the original decision and all they had to do was to write a few summary lines on why they made the decision.” he said.