In the third of a monthly series analysing whether the new Durham County Council is delivering for the area, Mark Tallentire examines how the authority is keeping the public informed of its work.
HANG around County Hall on any weekday and it would only be a matter of time before you hear someone mention area action partnerships.
AAPs are Durham County Council’s big idea to reach out to a sceptical public, many of whom felt one council would be too large to serve the whole county effectively.
Each of the 14 will include councillors, residents and representatives of outside groups and have an annual budget of £150,000.
Simon Henig, the Labour leader of Durham County Council, said “huge” turnouts for their launch meetings represented a vote of confidence in what the council has done so far. Nearly 2,000 people attended and hundreds wanted to join the boards.
However, Liberal Democrat Owen Temple said establishing the AAPs was taking too long.
He said: “Things do seem to have been done at the last minute, in a rush.
“We have known they were coming for a year, but three months in we do not even know who our coordinators are.”
Certainly, AAPs had a difficult birth. The original boundary proposals provoked anger in towns and villages across the county.
Residents of Bearpark argued they should be linked to Durham rather than Lanchester, while people in lower Teesdale debated whether they felt closer to Barnard Castle or Bishop Auckland.
Brian Stephens, cabinet member for neighbourhoods and partnerships, insists the council listened to people’s views and made changes.
He said: “You never please everybody, but we can definitely say 90 per cent were happy with what we did.
“We indicated we did not want talking shops. We have given them the budget to take action.”
Councillor Henig said: “Since April 1, there have been very few complaints. We have got something that reflects communities and which seems to have most people’s support.”
AAP board members were due to have been selected by the end of last month and the first “proper”
meetings held this month.
With the unitary council bid document full of references to “citizen focus” and “partnership”, councillors and officials know AAPs cannot afford to fail.
Coun Henig said: “It is very easy to write it down on a bit of paper – it is much more difficult to put structures in place that will do it and dispel some of the cynicism that had built up under the previous system.”
A survey conducted early last year found that only 23 per cent of adults in County Durham felt able to influence decisions affecting their area – something that Coun Henig admits is a “fairly low” figure.
He said: “We have got to do what we can to raise that. It is absolutely central to everything we do.”
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