It was distinctly hot in the press gallery at County Hall today as county councillors expelled rather more hot air in the cause of local democracy than they usually do.

The biggest row came - I had a sense of deja vu - over KCC's £50million deposits in Icelandic banks and what some have seen as its rather unseemly dispute with the Audit Commission.

The Conservative administration produced a letter from the Commission which appeared to vindicate its protests that the Commission had got it wrong when it accused KCC of "negligence" over its deposits. The word being put about was that the Commission had effectively capitulated and agreed to KCC's demands that it drop the charge of negligence.

The opposition parties were rather suspicious over the timing of this. The letter from the Commission to KCC outlning its plans to reword the report was dated April 16, leading both Labour and the Liberal Democrats to question why no-one had been given sight of it beforehand.

The explanation given was that the negotiations between KCC and the Commission was that they were being led by the county solicitor Geoff Wild and not even the Conservative administration had seen the letter, according to leader Paul Carter.

Labour was incandescent as the Commmission's about-turn pulled the rug under their motion of no confidence in the leader Paul Carter.

It strikes me that while KCC is rather pleased to have persuaded the Commission to drop the word negligent, replacing it with "carelessness" does not exactly represent a major leap forward. A Pyrrhic victory, perhaps? And the Commission's tone in its letter and proposed amendments (whch are not yet agreed, incidentally) indicates that it is not completely retracting everything in the original report and maintains that its general view that KCC and other authorities put public money unnecessarily at risk.

Which is probably what the wider public think too. Whether you call it negligence or carelessness, I guess most people simply see a situation in which KCC made a hash of something it ought not to have done.

I appreciate that the word "negligent" has certain legal connotations (and KCC was genuinely angry) but such fine distinctions over words are probably not ones which have any resonance with council taxpayers.

In my view, Labour rather flunked their attempt to have a go at Cllr Paul Carter, who returned to the council chamber after surviving the debate of no confidence to a rather staged round of applause and standing ovation from his Conservative colleagues. Did anyone mention there was an election coming up?

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