14 November 2003
Kingston upon Hull City Council has been dealt a double blow as it strives to shed its tarnished image following a second damning Audit Commission report, with councillors again at loggerheads and a key housing partner seemingly withdrawing its support.
The Labour-led authority, which was lambasted by the commission in a reinspection report published on November 7, has pledged to reform its approach to service delivery after the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister placed the council under statutory direction last week.
But an extraordinary full meeting of the council, held just hours after the ODPM declared it would give the leadership one final chance to avoid intervention, ended in farce after plans to set up an all-party Cabinet were thwarted, despite a vote in favour of the idea.
The Liberal Democrat-backed move won a narrow victory in the council chamber, but only because two Labour councillors were absent. The Labour leadership and Conservative group opposed the proposal and council leader Colin Inglis later declared the plan dead in the water.
A council statement read: 'The option of an all-party Cabinet from [LibDem] councillor Dave Woods was put to the meeting, but could not be moved forward.
'The view of two political groups was that better and faster progress could be made by the continuation of the one-party Cabinet.'
Inglis has now agreed to hold fortnightly meetings with the leaders of each group, as well as to allow cross-party debate on 'key issues' regarding the authority's recovery at all full council meetings.
He also promised to improve use of scrutiny commissions to develop policies and called for cross-party support for any issues that affect Hull residents.
But Inglis was dealt an immediate blow when a key housing group, the Hull United Residents and Tenants group (Hurat), appeared to withdraw its support for the council's housing policy.
Hurat claimed members and officers had only been paying them 'lip service' and that 'any trust [between them] that might have existed had long gone'.
The commission concluded on November 7 that Hull had 'not made substantial or sufficient progress since its first corporate governance inspection in 2002,' noting that the authority is still blighted by poor political leadership, in-fighting and governance difficulties.
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