Council Officers Propose Constitutional Changes in Oldham

At the Full Council meeting on 16 September, a report from the Assistant Director of Governance, Heather Moore will be submitted for consideration by Councillors.

The report provides ten recommends that the Council is asked to approve to help it through the interim period while operating without a Leader, Deputy Leader and Cabinet as required under the Local Government Act 2000.

Oldham Council has been referred to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government by Alex Bougatef the Director of Legal Services and Monitoring Officer following his report to Council as required under Section 5 of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 making clear the potential breach of legislation.

At present, the Chief Executive, Shelley Kipling, meets with all the party leaders fortnightly to discuss key issues and decisions. This is proposed to remain in place for the foreseeable future.

The report by Ms Moore, seeks to address the impasse in the Council chamber through, among other things, a distribution of positions in accordance with party representation.

For instance, chairs of committees are proposed as Labour to chair five, Reform UK four, Oldham Group 3 and all others, one each.

Further, the report recommends that the leaders of the four largest parties are aligned with each of the directorates, with Labour linked to Place, Reform to Children and Young People, Oldham Group to Health and Adult Care and the Liberal Democrats to Resources.

Positions on outside bodies, including the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Bee Network and GM Waste, are suggested to follow the same distribution as those proposed for committees.

To date, Oldham Council has been unable to agree on leadership after several full Council meetings since May this year when significant gains were made by Reform at the expense of losses incurred by all the established parties.

That has resulted in a political imbalance with no party being able to form an administration on its own, and no alliance being able to emerge with the numbers required to reach the 31 majority.

The question now is whether Councillors will be able to reach agreement on the interim constitution that is designed to get the Council out of this crisis of governance.

Today, 15 September, Councillor Wilkinson, the new leader of the Reform UK Group said in a statement published on the group’s Facebook page: “As the new Leader of the Reform UK Group on Oldham Council, I want to make our position absolutely clear: there will be no deals or political arrangements with other parties.”