Chacewater have a right to be heard

Chacewater Parish Council are not alone in feeling that the administration of Cornwall Council has not made the good working connections with local councils as it would like to claim.
The manner of the complaint by councillors at Chacewater may have annoyed the leader but that does not detract from the genuine sense of disconnection with an authority seen increasingly as remote and manipulative.
Denying that problems exist will only deepen the divide between the current administration at County Hall and the towns and parishes. Cllr Pollard would also be better served by having a letter writer who avoids spin.  Cllr Pollard should be above that.
For instance, the staff reduction from 22,000 to 12,000 is totally irrelevant because it largely relates to schools staff, who are no longer employed by the Council because their schools have become academies. Talking about remaining staff being 6,100 excluding schools is not accurate either as a large contingent of Council staff now work for subsidiaries such as Cormac and Cornwall Housing.
Members of Cornwall Council from all sides admit that there are too many  "closed session" meetings and too many meetings where there is little or no substance to the agenda.
Planning is an important function of the Council and here again it is clear that Chacewater represents the views of many across Cornwall that the Council does not listen sufficiently to the views of local people.
With the budget challenges that Cornwall Council faces, one of the current administration's current objectives has to be working in a spirit of trust and cooperation with the many parish and town councillors across Cornwall who give their service to their communities as volunteers.