Work held up as Mayor turns down Councillors plea to meet

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Got a pothole near you needs filling ? Is your road about due for resurfacing ?  Then rest assured Sefton Council is no hurry to do either. That's the consequence of Sefton’s mayor refusing the request of opposition councillors to reconvene the Council meeting abandoned on July 10th following disturbance from the public gallery. 

Liberal Democrat leader, Cllr John Pugh has requested an extraordinary meeting of the Council to properly ratify and authorise certain key Council schemes which now simply cannot go ahead over the summer. These include an extra £1.459 M of pothole repairs, £3.3M  of road resurfacing together with funds for Special Needs (£3M). School maintenance and leisure facilities are also affected. 

“ Sefton’s officers are desperately scrambling around to find ways and means of legally spending money and progressing schemes without council approval. It’s a genuine problem for them,’’ says Cllr Pugh, “ Much of the expenditure planned comes from external-usually government- sources so it’s not even saving the Council money. “ 

We have reached the ridiculous situation where there will not be an ordinary working meeting of the Full Council from the beginning of the Municipal Year until September. That may suit the Labour administration but who else ?"

The call for the extraordinary meeting to get business resumed and done is supported by all the opposition parties on Sefton -Conservatives, Green and Independents.

Cllr. Pugh says , “I cannot understand the logic of letting a disturbance in the public gallery lock up Council business. It’s not as though we haven’t already had an extraordinary meeting of the Council in June. That was to award the Council for Voluntary Service the Freedom of the Borough with a buffet and meal to follow at public expense. Merited though that award was, it's not a good look for the Council to find the time for the Prosecco and not the potholes.”

“I find it utterly baffling. During my time in the Commons I witnessed chemicals thrown into the Chamber and terrorist attacks that cost lives, but the democratic process continued as normal. Sefton has keeled over because of a bit of shouting in the public gallery and let it mess up business as usual."

Groups of councillors whose request for an extraordinary meeting is turned done by the Mayor can under the Sefton Constitution appeal to the Director of Corporate Services.