A LITTLE over two years ago local people were furious when the Cabinet of Mid Devon District Council sold our historic Market Street council building on the open market, rather than to Crediton Town Council, as the majority of the District Councillors had requested.

The Campaign for Local Democracy in Mid Devon, which I chair, was then established to persuade the District Council to reform so that such undemocratic decisions, clearly against the wishes of the public and indeed against the majority of Mid Devon District councillors, should not be possible in future.

Following elections in May 2019 the new District Council agreed to review its system of governance.

Ever since, we at the Campaign for Local Democracy have been doing our best to monitor how the council has been progressing this, not helped by the fact that all the meetings held have taken place in secret.

Matters were likely to come to a head at a special District Council meeting on Wednesday, March 17, to decide whether to accept the modest changes now recommended, which, however, fail totally to address our concerns.

Meantime, a group of 10 councillors have proposed that there should be a "State of the District" debate on the issue and this would, of necessity, take some months.

At the meeting on March 17 one of the councillors was proposing that a decision should be postponed until the State of the District debate has taken place.

Whether that succeeds or not, for the time-being, the present governance model permits the dictatorship of the leader and cabinet to continue.

After the elections two years ago the new leader sought a "balanced" cabinet, with its membership in proportion to the number of councillors elected from each group.

The Conservatives opted out, preferring to oppose the new administration.

Recently, under the absolute power the present model allows, the Leader has sacked the four Lib Dem cabinet members and replaced them with Conservatives and very recently, has sacked the Green councillor, Elizabeth Wainwright, after she had done sterling work as the member responsible for Climate Change.

Not only an insult to her but a serious miscalculation in the need for the council to tackle climate change.

It is very likely that our campaign will need to move up a gear shortly if we are to stop the tyranny of the present system and we will need all the help we can get.

If anyone is willing to support our campaign, please can you contact me at: [email protected]?

You can keep up with our efforts through our facebook page "campaignforlocaldemocracyinmiddevon".

David Nation

Chair

Campaign for Local Democracy at Mid Devon