I attended the CCHL AGM on Friday. Several times the chair referred to their commitment to openness and the fact that this was the first time that CCHL had had a public meeting to announce their performance in the past year.
That is another example of “without a knowledge of history you are bound to repeat it”. CCHL had a public meeting every year to which the public were invited from the start. This stopped during recent years.
I applaud the commitment to openness by CCHL stated at the AGM. However, the Chair seemed to have forgotten that she presented the councillors behind closed doors in the last few weeks with a list of which businesses under CCHL they could sell. This was not mentioned at the AGM.
Last week I wrote that the exec of CCC should have nothing to do with CCHL affairs. With the resignations of Dawn Baxendale and Leah Scales maybe it’s time to clean up this arrangement. CCHL is a company where the board members are appointed by the mayor and councillors. Their accountability is to the council table and receive their marching orders from there. That is how CCHL was set up and how it operated until I left the mayor’s office.
I have asked for all the (I bet expensive) reports which have been done for CCHL on each of the companies. This has been denied to me so far by Leah Scales. This request was submitted months ago. I guess the newly discovered “openness” will see the reports released now. What I am particularly interested in is what was the brief for these reports. I wonder how much of the briefs focused on selling assets which seemed to be a large part of the agenda.
At the AGM there was much focus on debt, which is completely understandable. The question I had as I left the gathering was does CCHL and its subsidiaries have the right mix of directors. It’s time for enterprising directors to be part of the mix. It would also be interesting to assess where this debt is held and is it to enable the businesses to grow.
Next week I will start a series of articles on the companies which make up the CCHL portfolio.
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