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Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Haringey council cabinet members ... signalling a new direction for the borough?

Here's the list of the Haringey council cabinet members.

Or download as word doc councillors%20list.docx

Some of the new titles/responsibilities seem to suggest a possible change in direction in some policy areas. There's the;

  • Cabinet Member for Corporate Services and Insourcing. At some point during the election I think I heard/read about the possibility of bringing some services like waste collection back in house. Also talking about bringing adult services back in.
  • Cabinet Member for Housing and Estate Renewal and Deputy Leader of the Council. This may signal more that the council will look to refurbishment/upgrading rather than wholesale demolition and rebuild but, who knows. It's obviously early days.

I can't remember the cabinet titles of the last administration but this one seems new; Deputy Cabinet Member for Broadwater Farm Resident Engagement. Maybe there are other new titles as well?

Parking; who's responsibility is this ... Civic Services or Environment? Zena Brabazon is responsible for the former.

Joseph Ejiofor

Leader of the Council

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Parking comes under Enviornment, so Cllr Kirsten Hearn.

You can find the portfolio responsibilities from the link below

http://www.haringey.gov.uk/local-democracy/how-decisions-are-made/c...

Thanks for that link, Michael. I see that the Leader seems to have moved planning into his own portfolio. Didn’t that be part of the Environment portfolio? I assume he’ll be pretty busy. Will he really have the bandwidth to give it the attention it needs?

That’s planning policy.  Planning decisions go to Planning Committee (one of the few of the committees left in local government as it is quasi judicial). The Chair of Planning will be decided at the first meeting of the new Council.  May be the same person but I think that’s unlikely as Planning Committee is a massive area of work.

It says planning policy and delivery. So I was assuming this also included enforcement and everything to do with planning, except if course the role of the planning committee, which I doubt he could change even if he wanted to. 

The membership of the Regulatory Committee is 

Cllr Carroll (Chair)

Cllr Rice (Vice Chair)

Cllr Basu
Cllr Bevan
Cllr James
Cllr Mitchell
Cllr Peacock
Cllr Say
Cllr Tabois
Cllr Williams
Cllr Cawley-Harrison

Cllr Hinchcliffe
Cllr Ross

Licensing and Planning are sub committees of Regulatory Committee and drew their Chairs and members from this pool

Planning

Cllr Carroll (Chair)

Cllr Rice (Vice Chair)

Cllr Bevan
Cllr James
Cllr Mitchell
Cllr Say
Cllr Tabois
Cllr Williams
Cllr Cawley-Harrison Cllr Hinchcliffe
Cllr Ross

Licensing A

Cllr Carroll (Chair)

Cllr Basu
Cllr Cawley-Harrison

Licensing B

Cllr Rice (Chair)

Cllr Peacock

Cllr Ross

The policy, enforcement and delivery arms are kept separate otherwise you could end up with a Chair who decides on policy and then makes a planning decision based on the policy they have agreed or authorises (or fails to authorise) enforcement action against a planning decision they have made, in effect being the defendant, prosecutor, judge and jury all at the same time.

It's worth recalling that under the previous regime, former councillor Alan Strickland was the "cabinet" member with responsibility for Housing, for Planning and for so-called Regeneration.
Suggestions that these functions needed separation were ignored.

Thanks Michael. That's interesting. Your knowledge of how a council works is very useful. However, I'd never had the idea that Ejifor would be responsible for planning decisions. My virtual eyebrows were raised because someone with an already large set of responsibilities has taken on a second set. I may be wrong, but I'd assumed that a lot of work goes on within planning. We're constantly hearing about how understaffed the department is. My concern was whether he has the bandwidth to take on this portfolio in addition to the responsibilities of leader. Given your in-depth insider's view of how a council works, do you think there's any basis for that ill-informed concern?

Planning Policy is the smallest element in a planning service.  And it’s long term so I would imagine that there will be bursts of activity followed by long periods where he won’t be involved.  Day to day enforcement is something that I wouldn't imagine he would get involved with, probably only the high profile/high risk cases that require political support.

Planning in the sense of development management though is huge.

How Planning Committee manages decision making differs across authorities. In some all decisions go to Committee.  In other the number of decisions make that impossible so Committee only hears cases that fall outside of policy, where a decision may end going to the Planning Inspectorate or where the application falls into the planning category of a major development.  They were more or less the only kinds of decisions the service I worked in took to Committee but even those numbers needed a three weekly committee cycle right through the year and Member briefings in between.

Mmm, I'm sure he won't get involved in the day-to-day work, but one assumes that like any department leader (or cabinet minister) worth their salt, there is much to be done!

Excellent, thanks Michael. I shall change the link within the post. A quick look shows some fairly random responsibities put under these titles.

Thanks Gordon. So 12 positions this time if we include the leader with his extensive responsibilities vs 8 last cabinet (or 9 with the leader). There are some interesting differences.

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