Come to the meeting on 6th Feb to celebrate centenary of Act extending vote 8pm Ilford Town Hall

Come and vote tomorrow for what you think the best idea is to improve our local democracy!

Meenakshi Sharma from Ilford Noise will promote the democratic charter as follows:

Charter for a Democratic Redbridge

1. The Council should publish an estimate of the population each month for the borough and for each ward.
2. The Council should produce a report each month for the borough and for each ward containing key performance indicators for crime, education, housing & health to allow residents to judge how the Council is coping with our growing population.
3. Councillors should present the report in their ward each month at a public meeting to be broadcast live on Facebook with questions from residents.
4. Redbridge cabinet members should prepare a report each month on their area of responsibility are and take residents questions at cabinet once a month with the meeting broadcast live on Facebook
5. The Council to produce a summary of key points in plain English for the public after each committee meeting including financial details

I will argue that the Council should be highlighting mental health statistics for the reasons below:

“The men and women who campaigned for the vote a hundred years ago lived in a far poorer world than today. There was no NHS in 1918 and it's creation is arguably a consequence of universal suffrage. Information technology has a role in extending and strengthening local democracy regarding public services such as health, education and policing.

A key reason that the plan to close King George A&E have been put on hold is not just that we can see with our own eyes our busy both King George and Queens are, but also the use of information technology allows us to know far more about what is going on in our hospitals than ever before.

Campaigners used the statistics that information technology makes possible on A&E waiting times at both hospitals to argue it would be madness to close King George A&E in 2019 and eventually the argument was won. Similarly, key monthly benchmarking of other public services has to be part of how we improve our local public services.

To an example, NELFT, the local NHS trust for mental health, produces a lot of stats, just as other public services do, but there is no equivalent monthly gold standards like A&E and cancer waiting times for campaigners and the public to get worked up about it.

I have discussed the idea of some key monthly statistics for mental health with Cllr Santos at a recent public meeting and he appeared supportive of the idea. Keeping track of Redbridge mental health waiting times, suicides, attempted suicides and cases of self harm come to mind. This combined with the relevant Councillor with a responsibility for mental health scrutiny producing a report each month at cabinet and taking public questions seems a way of using IT to improve accountability and transparency of a public service. The cabinet could be live streamed to allow those interested from the public to comment in real time using social media.

This is one means of how we could improve our democratic machinery to deliver better public services, surely something those who fought for the vote a hundred years ago would want us to discuss.

Perhaps we could have suggestions from the floor at the end of the meeting about how we could improve our democracy.”

Hope to have a full slate of ideas for improving our democracy tomorrow.

Attendance page tomorrow

https://www.facebook.com/events/253287401738995/