Labour faced embarrassment at last night’s council meeting, when council leader George Meehan admitted that the council does not properly respond to queries from councillors, let alone members of the public. He asked the council to ensure that queries from councillors are in future answered.

The council has long been criticised by the Liberal Democrats for its abysmal performance at dealing with queries from members. The Lib Dems argue that if they can ignore councillors’ requests for information on an issue, what chance does an ordinary member of the public have?

During the local elections however, special measures were put in place to ensure that councillors, at that time the vast majority of them Labour, received replies to their queries. The Lib Dems say these mechanism appear to have been dismantled following the elections, and piles of queries are routinely ignored for weeks by the Labour-run council.

Lib Dem councillor for Highgate, Neil Williams, comments:

“In Highgate, I have piles of queries to the council that remain unanswered. When I was elected, I thought I would get replies, but it is quite staggering that emails and letters sent as a result of concerns raised with us by residents are either completely ignored, or left for weeks. At least the Labour council leader has now acknowledged the scale of this problem in Haringey. Let’s make sure he actually does something about it.”