My wife and I recently attended the Annual Meeting at the Northern View.
Unlike previous years, there was plenty of notice but precious little information about exactly how the meeting would be run.There was plenty of encouragement to come along and suggestions that this was your opportunity to put the Council under scrutiny and ask questions on a variety of local topics in fact we were told we could; ‘raise any concerns you have’.
Berwick Town Council and in particular the Town Clerk are traditionally not keen on scrutiny especially at meetings, we have learnt this through personal experience so this appeared to be a welcome change in approach. How wrong we were!
On arrival at the meeting we were handed an Agenda (not available before the meeting) so it was clear from the outset that The Council and Town Clerk were keen to ‘control’ proceedings.Why couldn’t this have been issued in advance with an opportunity for residents to nominate an agenda item, common practise at other local Councils? There was nothing on the agenda regarding an open Q & A session or indeed how to participate at all. How were we supposed to raise ‘any concerns’, as we had been promised?
I had actually prepared two questions I wanted to ask; one in particular concerned how Town Council staff are appraised and by whom. In particular I wanted to understand what objectives and targets the Town Clerk was set, by whom and how often he was appraised. Looking at documents on line it seems that staff are appraised by line-managers with help from an external company whilst the Town Clerk is appraised by the Chair and a small panel. I was hoping for a discussion about this and wanted to establish what experience the panel or Chair had to do this versus, say, an experienced, independent external consultant. After all, the Town Clerk is a key role and the highest paid staff-member, staffing costs are the [Berwick Town Council’s] biggest single cost centre.
The Town Clerk had other ideas and opened the meeting with a significant bombshell; if there were questions or concerns on ‘Council matters’ then they would be dealt with via e mail. He seemed to justify this by stating: ‘This is not a Council meeting’. There would be no discussion or debate at the meeting unless it was on the nominated agenda items !! I have to say from that point my wife and I realised there was very little point in staying at the meeting unless we had a question on their ‘agenda’ items where it seemed the process to raise any ‘concerns’ was to interrupt whoever was presenting.
There was some useful feedback from the Repair Shop team, and a lot of comments and concerns from local retailers. There was a lot of criticism from the floor regarding the state of Marygate in particular regarding pavement cleaning. Lots of ducking and diving by the Town Clerk and Councillors and buck-passing to NCC.
There was, however, a very useful briefing from the Chairman of the Maltings Trust on the ‘new’ theatre. For the first time we heard that, in fact, it was not going to be a ‘new’ build at all due to insufficient funding, but it would apparently still be magnificent.
Having been given various versions from the Maltings, English Heritage etc etc over the last year or so, at last some clarity!! Residents will apparently be consulted over the summer and at the time of writing this I have just completed a very lengthy (too lengthy) survey run by The Maltings. Not one question, however, regarding the temporary Cinema at the Mobstore or any indication on what will now happen to the nationally-important Berwick Archives due to be in the Mobstore by summer 2026. Obviously this will no longer be happening. In fact the whole Living Barracks project currently seems to be all over the place.
‘The Bridge’ had a live feed from the meeting for people unable to attend but why did the Council not have its own live feed and recording? This would have enabled local residents to ask questions online and comment on proceedings during the meeting regarding the content – a start in genuine transparency and interaction?
My wife and I felt that Berwick Town Council has a long way to go if it feels that this meeting was a step towards being more open and transparent and it’s quite clear many locals feel the same. No wonder there is such a lack of enthusiasm for anyone putting themselves forwards as a Councillor.
Ian Madeley