“We agree in principle that in the current local government funding environment, this authority needs to be able to raise money from its activities, and generate the surplus it is forbidden to raise outside the vehicle of a local authority trading company.

We do have concerns about governance arrangements, and about the accountability of the proposed company, particularly under a non-proportional board.

We would want to see risk analysis specifically included in the report of the Chief Executive to the full council in January as outlined in section 3.1.

We recognise the concerns of the staff about this proposal, which we believe to be symptomatic of the continued pressure under which they have worked in this authority for some time, with constant reorganisation of departments and salami slicing of the workforce. We in this group value the contribution of the council’s staff to the work of the authority, and are concerned at the low level of staff morale under the present administration.

As the establishment of a local authority trading company under an independent Chairman will reduce the workload of the authority, we would like to ask the Leader what plans he has to correspondingly reduce the salary of the Chief Executive. We note that the Chairman of the Board will be paid ‘a small annual remuneration’. As not everyone’s definition of ‘small’ is the same, we would also like to ask the Leader what he envisages that remuneration as being, and to suggest to him that the council should cap the combined salary of Chief Executive and Chairman of the Board. We also believe that the remaining board members should be unremunerated, and invite the Leader to agree with us on this point.

My group has agreed that I should be the Liberal Democrat nominee to the committee.”