The two councillors who quit Greenwich Labour last month have helped form a new political group on the council – but have lost their places on committees that scrutinise town hall policies.
Ann-Marie Cousins and Lakshan Saldin, who left the ruling party three weeks ago, have now formed the Independent and Green group with Majella Anning, who quit Labour in March, and Tamasin Rhymes, who was elected as a Green councillor in June.
Anning will be the leader of the four-strong group, with Rhymes her deputy.
Unusually, Greenwich will now have two opposition groups, as the Conservatives also have four councillors. Anning is now officially a leader of the opposition, alongside the Tory leader Matt Hartley. Both Anning and Hartley are entitled to the £19,000 extra allowance which comes with the title, which comes on top of the £11,000 all councillors are paid.
It is the first time since 2010 – when the Liberal Democrats had two councillors, who lost their seats in elections that year – that three party groups have been represented at Woolwich Town Hall.
Forming the group means the new group is entitled to briefings from council officers on policies. But they have been barred from sitting on the committees that scrutinise what the council does, which are supposed to be shared out between the parties.
And unlike the Conservatives, they have not been allocated the services of a dedicated part-time political adviser – a role controversially introduced by council leader Anthony Okereke last year.
In documents presented to last week’s council meeting, Nassir Ali, the council officer in charge of corporate governance, said that because three of the four councillors were described as Labour representatives on their nomination papers, they should be counted with Labour when it came to be considered for scrutiny committees. Those places are effectively in the gift of Anthony Okereke, the council leader.
Ali used a piece of local government law to justify the decision, which effectively excludes the councillors from the committees. While decisions are not taken at scrutiny meetings, they do enable councillors to quiz officers and cabinet members in charge of areas such as housing, transport, education and public health, as well as representatives from organisations such as the NHS and Transport for London.
Cousins and Saldin will keep their roles in two committees that do not require political balance: Cousins sits on the licensing committee, while Saldin sits on the corporate parenting board, which deals with children and young people in care.
Anning said the group had taken outside advice and which had told them that the decision was “mistaken”, adding that different choices had been made in other councils when similar independent groups had been formed.
“There are very strong precedents for allowing independents to serve and scrutinise the council on scrutiny committees,” she said. “In this decision, Greenwich is a clear outlier.
“I think anyone in the public would think that, uh, when you have two oppositions now and one opposition has a seat on all of the scrutiny committees and the other opposition has zero, that something has gone amiss.
“This ridiculous decision will be reversed.”
But Hartley said that while he believed the law was “crystal clear”, the councillors should just turn up to meetings anyway.
“The constitution of the council allows for any councillor to attend any scrutiny meeting,” he said. “In nearly 12 years on the council, I have never known the chair of a committee meeting not to allow attending councillors who don’t serve on that committee to ask. Perhaps a pragmatic way forward would be to start attending those scrutiny meetings.”
Labour’s Denise Hyland, who was filling in for council leader Anthony Okereke, said the matter was “a council administrative issue”, and added: ” Any kickback from from the Independent and Green group must go to our head of legal and our chief executive for them to deal with the matter. It’s not for us to comment.”
A council spokesperson told The Greenwich Wire: “The council complies with the requirements of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 in relation to the allocation of seats on its committees and its published Members Allowances Scheme in relation to the payment of Special Responsibility Allowances.
“A political assistant is a council employee, political parties do not receive any allowance for this.”
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