TNAG-0201-FCO40-237-Local-government-reforms-1969 — Page 53

0003230

G.F. 323

CONFIDENTIAL

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Council should run some (the Council already wants all) publicly financed primary and secondary schools can only be explained as part of an almost desperate search for something relatively

harmless for the Urban Council to do. The amount of public resources to be set aside for these educational purposes is now determined by the Legislature. The schools are operated by the Education Department. There is elaborate consultative machinery.

Why are changes desirable? What alternative courses have been

considered? How can a proposal for such a radical change be worthy

of serious consideration when it is put forward without even a

reference to the welfare and well-being of the children who are to

be educated in these schools?

9. If we are to be concerned primarily with finding something

for the Urban Council to do it will be a matter of chance whether

the proposals are for the benefit of the ordinary people affected. We should surely proceed by considering the services themselves,

including the consultative arrangements associated with them, and

then, if it is found that improvements in the machinery of Government

are needed, by drawing up proposals for improving it accordingly.

10. The setting up of the City District Officer system has

confused some observers, who see it as a move away from our

traditional organisation by function. In fact it is not so; it is

an adjunct to the functional organisation which through its very efficiency can easily come to be looked on as too impersonal and remote. As I see it, it would be quite wrong for the C.D.O.s to be given any local executive duties. If such duties are important they require a specialised administration. Even if they are trivial their assimilation into the C.D.O. scheme would still distract the

staff from their main political function.

/The