Southport Lib Dem Councillor Jo Barton is most concerned about the amount of wasted paper that Sefton Council is churning out. She has asked Councillor Paulette Lappin, Sefton Cabinet Member for Corporate Services why it is that councillors are still receiving paper agendas for all their meetings which are often hand-delivered by an employee of the council driving around in a van.
Last year, councillors were persuaded to accept and use Galaxy hand-held devices to view council agendas etc in what was described as a “money saving move”. About sixty Galaxy hand-held devices were purchased and distributed to councillors last year along with a contract for a ‘wireless dongle’.
Jo Barton says:
“I have requested, at least three times, that the delivery of paper agendas to my home should cease, but to no avail. This week, I received a three-centimetre-high stack of paperwork relating to one week’s meetings alone.”
Councillor Barton has recently discovered that the ability to ‘opt out’ from the use of the hand-held devices is now no longer available to councillors. So she is pressing council chiefs to make plain to all an early date when the delivery of these hugely wasteful paper agendas will stop.