I ATTENDED the public meetings to launch the Area Forums and the Blackpool 1st Alliance wholeheartedly supports the concept in principle.

We urge all residents to seize the opportunity to make a real contribution to council affairs which the forums offer them.

If Tony Williams, the council's head of corporate policy, cannot dispel public apathy towards the council then nothing else will.

No doubt his Welsh background accounts for the "fire and brimstone" enthusiasm of his presentations to the meetings.

And playing hooker in a Welsh pack could just have given him the stamina to survive the grilling he underwent at all six venues.

However, having taken the time to digest the proposals which he elucidated so well, I think that while the concept is admirable the proposed structure has fatal flaws.

Mr Williams said repeatedly that the forums are intended to be free from party politics and are meant to give residents their own voice in council affairs.

That aim is not borne out by the proposed structure of the "working group" or committee for each Area Forum. The addition of six councillors to each committee surely is an injection of party politics into the deliberations of the committees?

It is also illogical to have elected councillors on the working group and at the same time have a ruling prohibiting "prospective" election candidates from serving on the committees.

The rule must mean that, once the notice of a forthcoming local election is published, sitting councillors will automatically be removed from their positions on the committees as Mr Williams states residents who become prospective candidates will be. After all, sitting councillors become prospective candidates when their nomination papers are lodged.

And has anyone thought about the provisions of the Human Rights Act?

Under the proposed structure party political councillors can sit on a committee intended to be conducted on a non-party political basis but a resident who is not a member of a political party and who decides to become a prospective independent or non-party political candidate is barred.

Now there's discrimination for you boyo.

Finally, according to Mr Williams, the councillor representatives on the committees are there to take note of any issues which the residents raise and to take them up with the council.

But why does it need six councillors on each committee to carry out that role? Power to the people but only as long as each resident on the committee has a matching councillor as a minder.

Mr Williams' catchphrase in relation to the effectiveness of the forums is "the proof of the pudding will be in the eating". Isn't more than one councillor on each committee "over egging the pudding"?

Ken Coups,

Chairman,

Blackpool 1st Alliance.