In the case of the Housing Committee, it was such a failure
that the long-serving independent ex-chairman was put back in
the chair. Even the Lib Dem group at the time had to agree to
that.
As a team effort, the council, supported by a ballot of all the
council's tenants, overwhelmingly decided that the only way to
deliver the new social housing (what we used to know as Council
Housing) that the borough desperately needed was to set up an
independent Local Housing Company. The result was West Devon
Homes, which has offices at the Wharf in Tavistock and another
in Okehampton.
The first chairman of WDH was a Lib Dem
councillor and it is true that he made a superb job of it. I also serve on
the board of trustees and am happy to give credit to all those
involved. It has been a success story because of a team effort,
not only of the councillors, but also of the staff of WDH and
the independent and tenant trustees who now run WDH as a
completely separate entity from the council.
As a result of those decisions and the subsequent work of the
cross-party group of councillors who have just a third of the
seats on WDH's Board of Trustees and even more of the work of
the trustees elected by the tenants and those appointed from
outside industry and other agencies, WDH has been a great
success. West Devon now has, for the first time since I became
a councillor, more social housing at the end of the year than
it had at the beginning.
It was a team effort. I've said it before and I make no apology for saying again that one of the reasons why I stay independent is that I don't believe that party groups should claim exclusive credit for the successes of a council. Even politically-controlled councils have members not of the controlling party. Those make contributions, too. Controlled councils make it easier for the controlling party to claim credit. I don't agree with that.
If I were a Conservative councillor, I should have to go along with a similar approach to claiming credit for my party for all the good things that the council had achieved as a team. I don't want to do that. So I stay independent and free to "tell it like it is".
It's your decision on 1st May.