Draft Minutes Scrutiny : Corporate Support and Resources Meeting Tuesday 7th November 2023.
Draft Minutes
The following screenshots show the Draft Minutes for this meeting.
These minutes will not, as is required by the Constitution of the Council, be presented to the next meeting of the Committee for approval as a correct record.
Instead, unconstitutionally, they will be presented to the next Meeting of the Full Council for approval as a correct record.
It is the Monitoring Officer’s decision, and the Full Council members appear to be satisfied, that this bad governance practice continues.
Minutes Not Fit For Purpose
I would refer to the point that the minutes are not fit for purpose because of the fact that lots of questions are recorded as being asked, and there is no record of the answers.
The Chair thanked the officers for their responses given in great detail but no indication of what the answers were or who provided them.
The Monitoring Officer strikes again with the practice of Obfuscation (the action of making something obscure, unclear, or unintelligible).
Formal Record
The questions recorded in these minutes will become part of the Council’s Formal Record when approved at the next meeting of the Committee (presenting the minutes for approval to the Full Council is unconstitutional)
However, answers and the details of the Officers supplying them will never become part of the formal record because they are not recorded in the minutes.
WHAT IS THE POINT OF DOING THIS?
The main reason for doing this is that the Monitoring Officer and the other Officers are able to evade accountability and responsibility for what they say in Council Meetings.
The questions and answers may be available on the video streams of meetings, for those who have the time and inclination to trawl through them, but the video streams are not part of the Formal Record of Council business.
Merthyr Council Cover-up 