Lack of transparency (From The Oxford Times)
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Lack of transparency
7:00am Thursday 2nd June 2011 in Letters
Sir – I am concerned about the lack of transparency in decision making at Oxford City Council. We have a list of council meetings on the city council website, but if you click on the PDF link you can see we have a large number of single member decision meetings.
We are informed of the dates on which these single member decision meetings happen, however, we are not informed what these meetings are about or who the single member is that attends the meeting.
Furthermore, why do we have meetings with only a single member?
How can this be right and where is the oversight? If a member of the public asks a question, how is it responded to? Could a member of the public observing the meeting actually learn anything about the questions and issues raised, decisions made etc?
Our democratic decision-making processes need to be open and transparent at all times and at the moment Oxford City Council clearly fails in this regard.
Kevin Meaney, Oxford
