THE TOWER OF BABEL

Just to keep us on our toes, it seems that CWACA has changed its name from ‘authority’ to ‘council’ and is now just plain CWACC.  Having streamlined their acronym, they’re working on improving the direct communications brought about by creating a unitary authority in place of the old County and District councils.  Accordingly, they’ve introduced a system of Local Strategic Partnerships, Area Partnerships, Community Partnerships, Community Forums and Neighbourhood Partnerships in which Parish Councils now appear on par with ‘Voluntary, Community and Faith Sectors’ (have a look at ‘Partnerships West’ update of March 2009 if you don’t believe me).  Call me old-fashioned, but parish councils are statutory government bodies and LSPs, APs, CPs, CFs, NPs and VCPCFs aren’t, so how does replacing the old three-tier system with an eight-tier system help get pot-holes repaired?   

Needless to say, everything is hunky dory because CWACC’s LSP has received formal Government approval for its LAA and has ‘assumed responsibility for its successful delivery’.  Part of that seems to be deciding whether the LSP should be re-branded as ‘WC People’, designing a logo for CWCPF and creating a Thematic Leads Group to consider cross-cutting issues affecting five new Thematic Partnerships (where did they come from?).  It all scores a duck with me.  

Theoghinus Nuttors, 12 May 2009.