The council’s watchdog, the scrutiny board, ruled today to uphold the decision to close Leeds Crisis Centre by June 2011. This is the last throw of the dice as far as ‘democratic’ process goes; now all that is left is the possibility of a court case.
The Guardian Leeds has reported on the meeting in full. A group of five conservative counsellors had “called in” the decision last week to be reconsidered on the grounds of inadequate consultation. Speaking on their behalf, Guiseley and Rawdon councillor Graham Latty said:
“I am here to question how the decision to close the crisis centre was made, a decision which I find in the circumstances inexplicable. It is a service which isn’t replicated anywhere across Leeds. It is unclear where this service would go if it was not provided by the council. If you don’t know what you are going to do with a service how can you have a full and proper consultation? It seems to me the only option on the table was to close it. An in depth consultation may not have come to that decision.”
The service was also supported by Paul Truswell of Leeds LINk, and Julian Pritlove, one of the founding members of the Centre twenty years ago.
Member of Parliament for Leeds North West, Greg Mulholland, has labelled the decision not to refer the decision to close the Leeds Crisis Cenre ‘a disgrace’. Apparently the decision was lost by two votes as a result of a Labour majority and support from Morley’s independent councillors. Mulholland explained:
“This is a disgraceful and clearly politically motivated decision by the Labour and Morley Borough Independent councillors not to insist the Labour-led executive board look again at their decision to close the Leeds Crisis Centre. They have put party and self interest ahead of their role of scrutinising difficult decisions; this makes a mockery of the whole scrutiny board system that is supposed to provide independent scrutiny of important decisions. This is a decision that so clearly merited proper scrutiny prior to the closure of a longstanding service, and it is a dereliction of duty for members of a scrutiny board to choose to support their party political colleagues’ desire to avoid scrutiny of their questionable decision making. This suggests a reform of the scrutiny system is needed otherwise controversial decisions will not be looked at simply because it suits the ruling group not to do so.”
It is a sad day for the Centre and for us. However, we do not feel defeated. We were aware of the determination and narrow-mindedness of certain senior officers and elected members. The fact that some amateurs with a blog, together with the courageous contributions of people who are living the cuts imposed by our politicians, have created such an awareness of the issues and galvanised such support is important. We hear that a senior NHS official has said that decisions on cuts will never be taken in this manner again in Leeds. We would be very happy to advise any other campaigns who wish to make sure that that prediction is correct.
