GO ON then. Tell me something about Darwen’s new neighbourhood board.

Yes, it’s a bit like a town council. And some councillors are on it. And, er, they’ve got money to spend. Er. Um.

But who actually appointed the members? How many of them are there?

How many can you name apart from some of the councillors?

What experience do they have to be spending our money?

Well, first of all I must declare a disinterest. No, I didn’t apply to join what I saw as yet another talking shop so I have no axe to grind.

But I have been making some enquiries, especially as the five area boards will be costing us around £1.5m a year according to the For Darwen Party. Don’t think so, lads.

The members were appointed by a group called the Community Network, a Blackburn-based voluntary group attached to the CVA and the CFVS and the LSP and the AAP (don’t ask).

They were given the job by the council who probably wanted to keep it all at arm’s length.

There are 20 of them, although a couple, neighbourhood manager Tim Birch and probably Garth Hodgkinson, chairman of the Area Agency Partnership (sorry, I don’t know, either), won’t have a vote.

The members? Well, councillors Roy Davies and Karimeh Foster (Lib-Dems), Trevor Maxfield and Andrew Graham (FD), Julie Slater (Con) and Dave Hollings (Lab) as well as parish councillor Graeme McIvor.

Then we have members of the public who applied and got the nod: Eileen Guy, Mathew Worden, John Sturgess, Lilian Salton, Sandra Taylor, Eric Hatton, Gianluca Sciambarella, Alan St John, Nichola Hargreaves, Elliot Gazdula and Elyse Chatterton.

Well, I pride myself in knowing a lot of people in Darwen as I’ve been poking around town for a long time. But of those names I know perhaps four.

It might say more about my local knowledge than it does about the experience of the mystery members, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

So who exactly are they? The council’s web site was useless, and I was told by a PR lass that as members of the public it was up to them what information they reveal.

The board, and the four in Blackburn, will be reviewed next summer.

If they get the thumbs up it’s likely they will be expanded with feeder ward boards.

It's a master plan to get more members of the public involved at grass roots.