The post you are reporting:
Here is a good one, with Keith and I in complete agreement.
What people are forgetting here is that personal opinions on the question to be asked, or the principal on which it is based, do not matter. The important fact here is the right of an individual to be heard by his elected representatives.
It is all very well going to an individual councillor with your views and I hope that all of us, at whatever level of local government, are prepared to listen to peoples views and take them to council where appropriate. There is however a very important 'but' here, no individual councillor at any level, including MP, can speak for the whole council unless the matter has been first put before the whole council. That some councillors and even some council employees (officers) choose to do so is neither here nor there, they do not have the democratic right to do so. All they can really do is to offer suggestions, relay agreed council policy or promise to take the matter up with the council. Personally I hope most go for the latter.
No council should ever consider it a waste of time to hear the views of a member of the electorate and if they do they are failing in their duty and should be replaced. In a perfect world every councillor will have read his agenda fully, as well as all supporting documents, before a meeting but in the real world this does not happen. All too often you will see councillors looking at them for the first time as the meetings start. This is the reason the electorate have three minutes to speak and that is why they should be heard.
An officers job is to carry out the decisions of the council, advise on legality, offer advice WHEN ASKED and put the decisions into practice. It is the elected councils duty to make policy and make decisions. From the sound of it here those distinctions have become very blurred.
