Cllr Serge Lourie, Leader of the Liberal Democrat Opposition, has received an apology from Richmond Council's Chief Executive, Gillian Norton, for what he called political bias in a press release, which quotes a Green Party spokesperson praising the Council's green credentials.

"The words you refer to in the press release are clearly outside the rules," said Mrs Norton. "The focus appears to have been on getting publicity for Overview and Scrutiny which is entirely desirable. However, it is not acceptable that such a basic mistake should have been made.

"The matter has been pursued with the staff concerned and I have asked for additional checks to be put in place to avoid a recurrence. I can only ask that you accept my and the staff's apology."

A spokesman from Richmond's press office, added: "We are withdrawing the press release (290.04). We have recognised it breached the guidelines and have apologised to Cllr Lourie."

Cllr Lourie has accepted the apology, adding that he hoped he would again never have to accuse the Council's press office of political bias.

He had objected to the press release, which did not appear in the council's news pages but which was issued to the media, because, he said, it was in contravention of the "Code of Practice on Local Government Publicity" that states that "Local authorities cannot publish any material...designed to affect public support for a political party".

The press release was headlined "Green Party hails Richmond Council's Green Thinking" and in Cllr Lourie's view it "should not have been put out by the Council as it is politically biased".

"I was astonished to read the statement by James Page of the Green Party who chaired the task group reporting to Cabinet on Climate Change," Cllr Lourie continued. "He said that 'there were only 3 out of 44 recommendations that the Cabinet did not support'. I have looked at the report in some detail and can only find two and a half recommendations that have been accepted. The rest have been kicked into the long grass.

"The Council has continued to promote car use and has banned the concept of sustainability in the Unitary Development Plan.

"Most of the other recommendations require 'further investigation', 'there are no current resources in place', there should be no action by the council to 'damage patterns of local travel to work', 'the specific 10% target would need to be reviewed', 'we do not consider it appropriate to draw resource...towards providing reports on energy efficiency, and proper audit is 'probably inadvisable'.

"I thought that the report from the Task Group was excellent. I think the response from Cabinet was extremely negative and I cannot imagine how the wool was pulled over the eyes of the Green Party Chair to make such positive statements about the Council.

"I have written to him asking for an explanation of his statement. Three recommendations were rejected and most were ignored."

Responding to Cllr Lourie, Mr Page said: "I am grateful to Cllr Lourie for his compliments concerning our Climate Change report, and look forward to receiving his letter mentioned on the newspages.

"As he knows we made a large number of solid recommendations. But I prefer to count carbon tonnage, not recommendations. The fact that the council now accepts the need to reduce carbon emissions is itself a major achievement for the task group. The principle of requiring renewable energy (as will soon be the case for all new buildings in Spain) was also supported.

"However, as I said at the cabinet meeting, the Supplementary Planning Guidance on renewable energy was promised three years ago (following my representations on the issue at the first public inquiry in 2000) so it should not, I hope, be necessary to wait for the new Local Development Plan for the SPG.

"Cllr Lourie is right to point out the problems in transport. Clearly there is work to do. It seems to me that anyone wanting to be able to travel by car faster than you can walk should be in favour of reducing Richmond traffic. This issue is too important for party squabbles. We will need to work together to make progress."

LibDem environment spokesman, Cllr Martin Elengorn, endorsed Cllr Lourie's view of the cabinet response. "In my view a lot of the Cabinet responses were half-hearted and the Scrutiny Committee will need to keep a very close eye on things to make sure words are translated into action. In particular a full-time Energy Manager is required who, I am sure, would be self-financing," he commented.

See the amended Richmond Council press release

See the earlier Journal article on the Cabinet climate change debate and report

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

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