Town Centre Partnership must be accountable and open to public - Brooks

9.41.55am BST (GMT +0100) Wed 7th Oct 2009

Councillor Jeff Brooks is insisting that the structure, governance and accountability of the Newbury Town Centre Partnership be scrutinised by WBC's Scrutiny watchdog body as a matter of urgency. He is extremely worried at the perception of secrecy that exists in the public's mind about the body. Brooks asserts:

"We set this body up as a consultative panel when we were in power - enabling local people from the retail and voluntary sectors and other interested and involved parties to have a say in how Newbury develops. Sadly the Conservatives have let it grow into a sort of Quango-like organisation with a group of largely unelected people making key decisions about the town's development in private and within a veil of secrecy. The Pavilion in the Park has highlighted how this body is in danger of morphing into a major decision maker of how the town develops and how public money is spent without being open in its debates and decisions. It is all very unsatisfactory.

While I am sure its members have Newbury's best interests at heart there is something quite wrong in the fact that one of those members has become the principal design authority of the new Victoria Park building - what tender process did that decision go through - that is a question that needs answering. We must not let bodies like this develop into semi Council like organisations without proper governance - how are members selected, how do they make decisions, how is it funded, are minutes taken and published, are meetings open to the public?" These are the questions I want answered and I am calling on our scrutiny body to do that - I would expect all TCP members would welcome that as I am sure they would not want to be accused of developing their own "closed shop" where only their - unelected - opinions count."