Representatives of the Islands’ Council are meeting with Central Government next week following a speech by MP Andrew George warning that the number of inspections on Scilly is threatening the operation of the Council.
George, Lib-Dem MP for St Ives, told the House of Commons that the local authority inspection regime had reached “bizarre” heights, with the council’s four senior officers spending a total of 250 days last year dealing with various inspections. The Islands were visited by 31 government teams, despite being by far the smallest unitary authority in the country.
Now Chief Executive Philip Hygate, Modernisation Officer Suzanne Pender and Chairman Christine Savill will meet with all inspection agencies and Government Office for the South West (GOSW) on Monday to agree a more proportional framework of inspection.
“The meeting has a big agenda, but part of it is to do with the fact that inspections are not working over here,” Suzanne told ScillyNews. “The inspections applied to us are not meaningful and don’t reflect what is happening on the Islands.”
“An example would be that the council has a one-star rating overall and is found to be failing in some areas. One is Road Traffic Safety, where we are the worst performing authority. In reality, there has never been a serious or fatal injury on the Isles of Scilly, so the score is always zero because we are not seen to be improving at all.
“It is absolutely ridiculous things like this that we need to get rid of because it is skewing the way the council’s performance is rated.”