Cabinet Member - £350 energy money for all (£150 free) - uses Facebook to explain the deal

Here's Councillor Seema Chandwani (Cabinet Member for Customer Service, Welfare and the Public Realm) attempting, in a piece to camera in the Broadwater Farm Facebook Group, to respond to the confusion she's picked up among residents contacting her about the Government's response to unaffordable energy bills.

I learned from the vid that one energy bill payer per Council Tax Band A-D home get a free £150 cash gift - not means tested, no matter what your debt status. You also get a £200 rebate off your electricity bill, repayable by the addition of a £40 charge each year for the next five years (so, interest free).

I hadn't fully grasped all this just by reading\hearing the news. It's also an efficient way for her to augment her email replies to stem the flow of enquiries all asking pretty much the same obvious questions - I for one learned stuff from her nicely judged vid with the added factor - the wisdom of crowds.

Cllr Seema is a regular video contributor to the BWF FB group (BWF is in her ward). She delivers the info and uses her post to collect feedback and invite people to contact her directly (and receive either a personal private response or a public one if it's suitable) - a model of communication if you ask me. This, after all, is the modern way.

You could urge your local Cllrs to add communicating with people by video to their 'standard' behaviour, especially when it directly concerns those on low incomes and those like me who may not absorb the info in other ways, and the otherwise hard-to-reach.

Whilst you're at it, ask Cllrs to arrange for Council Officers to explain things on HoL too, will you?  

For instance, there are complicated factors in the perennial problem of the traffic along Green Lanes - would it help to have both the relevant Officers and the Cllrs who eventually decide explaining the various issues on HoL and answering questions here? I think so. Officers do send out info by email to all and sundry, what's the difference if they speak their text to camera?

IMO a 'circular democracy' empowers local people to contribute to the solutions to be implemented on behalf of us all with ideas of our own that end up as policy. It would transform HoL if the Council used this neighbourhood network iteratively.

HoL is a sort of virtual, cross-party 'assembly' in permanent session. Cllrs do post here but rarely initiate comms and even rarer, ask people for their opinions before the blue touch paper is lit on policies fleshed out in confidential 'member' sessions by the ruling party. 

There isn't much sense to me on HoL that, if you ask a question\make a comment\suggest something, it directly affects what happens - it surely does, but not often enough for me.

HoL did a sterling job around the 2010 election giving Cllr Candidates a platform - here's Cllr Brabazon in a candidate interview from Apr 2010 (she is now Cabinet Member for Early Years, Children and Families)

Meeting Cllrs, they often say they are 'here to listen' and assure that there will be action on concerns raised directly with them, but few if any I meet ever say 'what do you think we should do?'

This could be, I suppose, because to contribute effectively, we'd need to have put in the work of understanding the background and foreground and get the briefing officers provide them with. None of the contentious issues the Council decide on our behalf are easy or straightforward, sadly.

Some see the effects of politics as 'unintended consequences' of policies gone wrong. I see a lack of responsibility - people generally do not feel that the Council is 'their' council - people see things done 'to' them rather than with them. They are cynical and dismissive of consultation and reject calls for participation in droves.

Many do not seem to accept that what the Council does is done in their name, but it really is - we had a chance to vote and our system means those elected have a long mandate even if turnout is low. Dare I ask - when the Council makes a mistake, are we to blame as we let them be appointed to decide for us?

Vids can be effective in the hands of 'ordinary' Cllrs in spreading understanding and understanding is the key to effective participation I guess. Unlike some other technologies, pretty much all the Cllrs can nowadays record a piece to camera and post it on HoL\social media thanks to Zoom etc's 'record' facility.

Everyone reading this could do the same. I'd find it nicer to have the alternative of an occasional vid of you expressing your comment (provided it was short unless you are compelling!) as well as being able to choose to read a text version. As I'm nothing to write home about, you probably would prefer not to see my boat race :)

The new Council leader threw down a challenge when appointed in May 2021 - Officers and Councillors to 'co-produce' with residents. Can we really jointly shape things that will affect us and ours for decades by simply posting a few opinionated vids here on HoL?