RUMOUR has it that West Devon Borough Council (WDBC) intends to abolish its committees and reorganise itself with 'Executive' councillors who will make all the decisions. No doubt the decision will be made before the end of the present council, so as to have the new system in place for the start of the new one in May.

Why? Well, the political spin will tell you that it will 'speed up decision making' and make the council 'more accountable'. The first may be true, albeit no guide to speed of implementation, let alone to the quality of the decisions.

The second is a truly Orwellian distortion: an 'Executive' councillor is, like any other, accountable only to electors of one ward, yet has powers to make decisions across the whole of the council's area. That implies less, not more, accountability than the present system, which ensures that decisions are made by committees to which all affected ward councillors have access.

The 'Executive Model' is designed for councils with decisive overall party political control; it is modelled along parliamentary lines inappropriate to small rural councils. In practice, the Executive is wholly drawn from the single majority party and the rest of the councillors become little more than lobby-fodder. All but a handful of high-level decisions (eg budget-setting) are delegated to a single Executive councillor.

Whilst it is theoretically possible to 'call in' decisions, the process is so difficult and the timescales so short that very few call-ins are made – and even fewer are successful in overturning or amending an executive decision.

Your readers will recall a recent controversy over an executive decision by Devon County Council to install parking meters. There was no prior notice of the intention and the kit was bought and paid for before any public announcement was made. That is the way Executive councils work. I do not think it is right and I do not want to see WDBC's councillors emasculated in this way.

WDBC has always benefited from a large body of Independent councillors, free from political party whips, who have ensured that all councillors had equal access to the whole of the decision-making process – not just a token role of nodding through decisions already made by a few 'senior' members, all appointed by a single political group. Decisions may take longer when made this way, but they are usually better decisions.

Finally — and this is perhaps the greatest danger of all — this is a one-way process. Once a council has volunteered to adopt the Executive Model, there is no way to opt out of it.

Regardless of the ghastly consequences, we shall be stuck with an Executive Borough Council, in which a member elected (say) in Northlew or Bere Ferrers, makes binding decisions for (say) Tavistock or Okehampton, which the electors of Tavistock/Okehampton have, de facto, no way of reversing.

Roger W Mathew

Down Road

Tavistock