Oldham’s cabinet pushed back on critical decisions

Oldham’s Labour leadership have had two critical decisions referred back with requests for more evidence, after they were “called in” by councillors Mark Kenyon and Sam Al-Hamdani.

The two decisions were on the Princes Gate development site in Mumps, and on catering for local schools. The scrutiny committee voted unanimously to ask the Cabinet to review the decisions, with specific recommendations for extra information needed to justify them.

Liberal Democrat Councillor Sam Al-Hamdani said: “We challenged how the cabinet arrived at these decisions. There was insufficient information in the reports to justify the decisions that were made – and the scrutiny committee agreed with us.

“We also want to know why more of the reports about these decisions is not public. Where there is a commercial contract under negotiation, I can understand specific elements being excluded, but that should be the exception, not the rule. Too much is happening behind closed doors.”

The decisions will now be reviewed by Cabinet, with additional detail being added that was not in the original reports.

Councillor Al-Hamdani continued: “I am desperate to see Princes Gate developed – and that’s why I want to see evidence that this is the best way to do that. The Council should be able to show that it has looked at different strategies and minimised any risks, and that means doing its homework first.

“I’ll be delighted if the Council comes back, answers all the questions that we put to it, and shows that this is the right decision – but it wasn’t able to do that in front of the scrutiny committee. It is therefore only right that it goes back and review the decisions it made and the process about how it got there.”