It’s been just over 100 days since the BeFuddled Party took over the running of the All-New-Yet-Unimproved Somerset County Council and SomersetClive took the opportunity to sit down with BeFuddled Council Leader Phil Crivens to discuss how it’s going.
“I’m as confused about it as you are” Cllr Crivens said. “We didn’t expect to secure more than a handful of seats in the election, so to find that we won the majority was a big shock. We didn’t have any plans as to what we were going to do if that happened because, quite honestly, no one expected it in a million years.”
Cllr Crivens explained that the new administration has already faced a number of challenges, including having to find the toilets in County Hall and overseeing the redistribution of car parking passes, as well as having to implement the changes required to move from the four-District Council structure to one all encompassing County Council – a move which the BeFuddled Party opposed in the first place.
“It’s true. The BeFuddled Party didn’t agree to the proposal to abolish the four District councils and replace them with one behemoth council. But that’s what happened and we are in charge so we have to make the best of it.
One of the first things we are going to do is create four local District Committees (DCs), with each DC probably covering the areas currently run by the four District Councils (DCs). We haven’t entirely decided on the boundaries of our DCs, they may well follow the boundaries of the current DCs, but then again, they might not.
With this in mind we are going to need to hold several meetings and consultations with the public and give everyone attending a map of Somerset and a felt tip pen so that residents can share their ideas.”
Outlining the BeFuddled Party vision for Somerset Councillor Crivens consulted a post-it note to check the buzzwords “Greener, fairer and caring” he announced. “We are here to do a job. Once we’ve identified what that job is.“