St Ann's and Harringay Area Forum and Committee - 5 March 2015

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Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on March 6, 2015 at 17:23

Anyone understand what these are for, exactly?  Ours (Crouch End + Hornsey) seems tightly controlled, poorly attended and without accountability. Based on going to mine when it was Lib-Dem controlled and now it's Labour:

The Forums, if pushed, announce 'actions' they will undertake during the meeting but there is no follow up, no status on previous ones, no means of knowing outside the meetings how an action is progressing etc  - no sense that the Forum has 'teeth' and can get things done. What have Forums achieved?

There seems to be a 'round-robin' approach to some agenda items that I think appear on each Area Forum throughout Haringey. So effectively it's the same item, same speaker 'doing the rounds'. These items are general interest items with little specific to the area.  So, for instance, Veolia will do a stint and, although mention will be made of local rubbish shortcomings, the item seems aimed at propaganda.

What emerges for me is that the public in general know so little about the Council and how it works that relatively big chunks of time are spent explaining how services work, what exists etc and quoting LBH webpages at residents.

There doesn't seem a mechanism for local people to participate in the compilation of the agenda in advance - no means to comment on what is to come, nor add items.

There used to be a 'local plan' approach but that seems to have gone - surely an Area Forum ought to construct a local plan?

HoLsters seem concerned that there isn't enough local democracy. The Forum could respond to that but seems designed to put people off - a 'them and us' arrangement of seating etc.

It could be a place with participatory budgeting happened - we could add up how much of our money was spent  where and change it so it was better and fairer.  That needs good local knowledge and input.  

We could ask Cllrs to 'report' to us what they've done locally since the last one.

Maybe what is needed is a Forum User Group (FUG) devoid of political representation to oversee what happens?

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