By Cllr Rachel Burgess
As Councillors, the public rightly have high expectations of us and entrust us to fairly represent our local area.
This includes upholding standards and good governance, taking fair decisions and working openly and transparently.
Last week, I was delighted to be re-elected as Chair of the Council’s Audit Committee for another year. In light of recent high-profile financial failings in local authorities, most recently Woking and Thurrock, the work of the Council’s Audit Committee is as important as ever.
According to its Terms of Reference, the Audit Committee is “independent and objective” and, although it comprises largely elected councillors, we strive to be a genuinely non-political committee.
Last year we appointed a politically-independent member of the committee to support this, and I hope we will appoint a second independent member this year.
The lack of an independent member of the committee in the past had been a weakness in the Committee’s credibility and I am pleased we are strengthening it in this way, in line with best practice.
The Committee’s role is to support good governance, effective controls, risk management and effective internal and external audit.
It can be hard to remove politics from politicians – however the committee has been genuinely collaborative and non-political over the last year.
Unfortunately, some of the Council’s scrutiny committees, which are also supposed to be non-political, have failed to do so.
At a meeting of the Overview & Scrutiny Management Committee earlier this year, a senior Conservative councillor and member of the committee stated quite clearly that the Conservative Group’s policy was to oppose the proposed changes to waste collections – despite the fact that the Council’s constitution clearly states that the party whip is incompatible with scrutiny committees.
I was sorry to learn that a newly-elected Conservative town councillor has recently resigned, just a month after being elected to Wokingham Town Council.
However, in stepping down, Cllr Danny Spencer has shown more integrity and honesty in taking this decision than one who held the highest political office in the land, the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
In Wokingham, the Audit Committee supports the aim for the highest possible public standards, so it has been shocking to learn of the recent somewhat Trumpian behaviour from our former Prime Minister. Having effectively been found guilty by the Privileges Committee of misleading parliament over “partygate”, his subsequent resignation statement contained a complete lack of contrition, and instead he aimed his fire at the work of the cross-party committee investigating the affair.
I doubt Johnson himself even believes his own comments. The Nolan Principles of Public Life are part of all councillors’ code of conduct here in Wokingham. Read through them and consider whether any of them can apply to former Prime Minister Johnson: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, leadership.
Johnson may be an extreme example of a failure to uphold high public standards but no-one is above the law. Even the widely-respected Nicola Sturgeon, former leader of the SNP and First Minister of Scotland, was arrested this week as part of an investigation into SNP party finances.
As councillors, we would all do well to remember that we are public servants and to ensure that the Nolan principles guide everything we do to represent our residents.
We may have had some poor national examples set for us, but that does not mean we cannot strive for accountability, responsibility, fairness and transparency across the board. We have some excellent members on the Audit Committee, of all parties and of none, and I look forward to us working as a collaborative team for another year to support good governance and the highest possible standards in Wokingham Borough Council.
Cllr Rachel Burgess is the leader of Wokingham Labour, and ward member for Norreys on Wokingham Borough Council
