How Accessible is Your Barnet Councillor?

Yesterday I saw a tweet from Phil Fletcher which I found utterly disheartening.

#HighBarnetSurgeries Where were the Tory councillors? Waited 1/2 an hour and no sign of them. No phone call to librarians to say sorry.
— Phil Fletcher (@philfletchx) June 21, 2014

It was particularly galling as I had been at the Chipping Barnet  Residents forum earlier this week when Phil was trying to ask some perfectly reasonable questions and to which Cllr Lisa Rutter kept chanting the mantra "go and ask your councillor". Subsequently Cllr Longstaff replied that they had moved the surgery to the Conservative Party Headquarters at 163 Barnet High Street a year ago. It is just a shame that no one bothered to change the details on the council website which still shows surgeries are held at Chipping Barnet Library where Phil had attended.

Being the sort of person that I am, I thought I would look into this a bit further and look at the surgery details of all councillors. A few of the new councillors have yet to set out their surgery details but my analysis did reveal something else quite interesting and that is the amount of time councillors devote to surgeries. Set out below is a graph showing the number of minutes each month (assuming 4 week months) councillors host their surgeries.

One thing jumps off the page at you and that is minimal time Conservative councillors devote to surgeries (with the exception of Mill Hill Cllrs). The general trend is that Labour councillors allocate 90 minutes every week whereas Conservatives allocate either 60 or 90 minutes once a month. Some councillors may claim that they are always available but the whole point of surgeries is that councillors make themselves easily accessible.

It is all very well Lisa Rutter saying going and speak to your councillor but not all Conservative councillors are as conscientious as her (she holds a one hour weekly surgery). If your councillor is only available between 6pm and 7pm on the 4th Monday of each month (Garden Suburb)  or 6pm to 7pm at Hendon Town Hall on the first Monday of the month, but none at all in October (Hendon) there is a pretty good chance you will miss the opportunity to visit them.

Some Conservative councillors may say that there is no need/demand for more surgery time but if you make it difficult for people to visit their councillor and don't keep your contact details up to date, it is not surprising that residents do not attend. At a time when the council is talking about the importance of resident engagement to take up service that the council will no longer provide, I would have thought that the starting point for that engagement would have been councillor surgeries.

By the way, Councillor Brian Gordon's details should be updated as they are still showing his surgery for the old Hale Ward from where he jumped ship, not the Edgware ward where he is now councillor.