DRIFFIELD town council has a committee which has never ever met, it has been revealed.
According to the authority’s own website, the The Cass Hall management committee is scheduled to meet quarterly.
The fact it has never met was revealed by Coun Tony Cooper when he voiced concern over the number of cancelled town council committee and working group meetings.
He told colleagues that he was extremely concerned at the situation.
Cancellation of planning committees was felt by the council to be understandable due to a lack of applications at certain times of the year but Coun Cooper cited examples of other committees which had been cancelled numerous times.
He said the Cass Hall Management Committee had yet to even meet and the CCTV committee had only met a handful of times during the year - and would not now meet again until next January.
Coun Cooper said understood that these cancellations were mostly due to committees not being quorate. But he remained concerned that the CCTV committee also comprised enthusiastic members of the public who were active fundraisers who might think “Why should we bother if town councillors don’t.”
Coun David Credland said that some councillors had business commitments and could not just ‘switch them off’, especially if they had employees who relied upon them.
He made an appeal for tolerance as people could only do so much and the council must not risk losing councillors with a good contribution to make simply because they could not attend every committee meeting.
Coun Matt Rogers raissd possibility of holding some meetings before or after full council meetings rather than on a different day.
It was also suggested that some committees could be amagamated.
Coun Joyce Fletcher asked if it was a statutory duty to belong to committees as there were some councillors who were not members of any committees.
Coun Paul Rounding felt that as chair of the CCTV Committee that he had suffered a personal attack as a result of the debate. He said meetings were cancelled if they were not quorate but stressed that he was always able to give regular updates on the system to the town council.