Response from Julia Seath - Councillor for Whitstable Harbour Ward:

"Thank you for your interest in this matter. In answer to your question 'how are you challenging this?' I would say that I have twice challenged this on two occassions, one of them being the meeting of the joint Executive and Overview committees but my view did not receive any support even from the Whitstable members present. I understand the Scrutiny Review is being undertaken at the request of the Harbour Board and, in common with all Scrutiny Reviews, will be undertaken under the auspices of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee on which I sit as a member. The latter committee is comprised of members from all three political parties. I believe that the Harbour Board (comprised of elected and independent (non elected but appointed) members) decided that because a number of years have elapsed since the formation of the Board it was timely to review the management, how it is working and how it might be managed in future. I think that the terms of reference for the review panel will be available - maybe on the website - I haven't checked. The website has a section on the Council's Scrutiny function. The panel will interview witnesses, including stakeholders and all Whitstable elected members but only the panel will participate in all the review work. Usually Scrutiny Review findings are eventually presented to the O&S commitee for approval and to that committee for ongoing monitoring of the implementation of any agreed action plan. Whether this will be followed in regard to the Harbour Scrutiny Review I don't know. I think my view has been clearly expressed in the newspaper article. It is incorrect to say that the 'Chief Executive had the final say'. This was a decision of members with officer advice. When arguing for participation from Whitstable I was not specific about who that person or persons might be. I always accepted that it would be too much to expect to be on it myself as a minority opposition member but I did and do strongly believe that one member of the 5 member review panel should be from Whitstable precisely because Whitstable elected representatives have an intimate knowledge of the town and can therefore contribute invaluable information and insight to the review that members from other areas may not possess. Although I am one of the two elected members for Harbour Ward (the other being John Wratten who, quite correctly, would be excluded from the Review Panel because he is a member of the Harbour Board), the 12 Whitstable councillors consist of 10 Conservatives so I it's obvious to expect that the Whitstable member would be a Conservative. I have no problem with that. It is at least democratic."

This was sent as an email response. Julia Seath kindly gave me permission to reproduce on civicboom.com verbatim.

Image credited to:Whitstable1