SIR – As a county councillor I am getting sick and tired of the restrictions placed on opposition councillors to question the council and put forward our ideas for improving things.

I fully support the comments made by fellow councillors that you reported on Saturday (A threat to democracy).

It is severely damaging to the already limited democracy that we have at the county council.

Full council is one of the few chances for opposition councillors to publicly hold the administration to account.

Yet firstly, they cram three Cabinet Member reports into the morning session, with limited time to ask questions, with the result that only a quarter of one report was covered.

We only get the chance to question a Cabinet report once every two years, but we only get 30 minutes to do so. This is ridiculous.

Secondly, a Conservative motion that had obvious cross-party support was debated by mainly Conservative councillors for almost an hour, which meant that there was no time to debate the other four (opposition) motions.

 And they were really important motions that should have been discussed but weren’t, especially two that related to the biggest crisis we face, the climate emergency.

We could have looked at how to use the wasted heat from the incinerator at Hartlebury to help reduce our CO2 emissions, or considered how to increase the availability of EV charging points in Worcester.

Instead, we finished the meeting early, with those in power avoiding a large amount of the scrutiny that a functioning democracy needs.

Whichever political party you support, surely you can see that this is not a good way to run a council and needs to change.

Matthew Jenkins

County Councillor for St Stephen, Worcester