Last night's meeting was quite interesting, but there were some procedural aspects which, as a former professional bureaucrat, I found rather irritating.

1. I thought that Cllr John Russell was given an impossible job in being apparently required both to chair the meeting and to present most of the business. Surely it would be better to have a separate chair (does it have to be a councillor?) to do things like watching the clock and explaining in advance the system under which the various projects are to be voted on?

2. Grouping people round tables for discussion is fine, but it only works if enough time is given for the groups to 'jell' and develop some sort of
internal dynamic. That wasn't the case last night.

3. Why did the nicely printed 'report back' forms given to each table have to be poster size? (Quite expensive to produce, I'd have thought). Surely these are only necessary if there is to be a formal 'flip chart' type report back at a plenary session, which there wasn't last night. Did the chair and the secretary (if that's what Sam Dias is) liaise about this in advance, I wonder?

4. Could the system for getting feedback about the meetings from attenders be reviewed? It's always difficult/impossible to write considered and constructive feedback on a paper evaluation form when one is under time pressure at the end of the meeting and the chairs are being tidied away. Why can't we be offered the option of an on-line evaluation form? This would at least prevent me having to bore SE23 Forum readers with this sort of stuff (in the hope that somebody important will read it.)