DESPITE the likelihood that local services will almost all be transferred to new and existing parishes within eight months, it appears much of the detail still needs to be worked out.

The cabinet member responsible for the proposals went before the council’s scrutiny committee on Monday to answer more probing questions than she had previously faced.

As it became clear that many scenarios were yet to be explored, Coun Martin had to concede that “we haven’t, at this stage, looked at some of those detail questions.”

With the parishing plan set to be fully rolled out and up and running by April, some residents may see that admission as a cause for concern.

The scrutiny committee is made up of councillors from both the Conservative majority and the Labour opposition and on Monday, the questions on parishing came from both sides of the political divide.

Councillors challenged the statement made by Coun Martin at last week’s cabinet meeting where she turned down an offer by the leader of the Labour group to take a cross party approach to a leaflet which will be distributed to households as part of the parishing consultation phase.

She said that it was not possible because ‘the button had just been pushed’ on the printing process, despite the one off budget allocation of £15,000 not having been approved by cabinet or ratified by scrutiny.

Coun Des Moffatt (Lab - Rodbourne Cheney), raised concerns that the figures being used to project the amount of money likely to be available to parish councils were not sufficiently detailed – they assumed a generic housing profile when in reality that is not the case.

The number of band D properties clearly differs between more and less affluent areas yet the finance team accepted that they had been using a fixed figure across the borough.

Coun Gemma McCracken (Con – St Andrews), appeared somewhat surprised at the response she received when she asked how the council planned to measure the success of the rollout of services to new and existing parishes.

Coun Martin accepted that there was no plan to establish any key performance indicators and that once the services had been handed over “we won’t have any ongoing jurisdiction.”

Other issues raised included the need to determine, with some haste, which assets were going to be the responsibility of the borough and which would move to become the responsibility of the parishes.

It appears that no decision has yet been taken on which camp some of the town’s major assets such as Queen’s Park or the lakes between Parks and Eldene, among many others, will fall into.

Coun Chris Watts (Lab – Liden, Eldene and Park South) requested an update on discussions with town centre businesses on the need for them to provide a £400,000 contribution to offset the higher precept in that area.

It was an issue, he said, which “threatened the viability of the town centre.”

Again, he was told that no further detail could be provided.

A formal consultation is now underway on the proposals - residents will soon join councillors in moving beyond the broad principles to demand answers to these more detailed questions.