The famous Islington Council 'Dog Consultation'

The Council's recent 'Dog Consultation' is a classic example of how this Lib Dem Council completely failed to engage with local people on an important local issue.

The 'consultation' was entitled "How to deal with irresponsible dog owners" - which sounds fine, and something everyone would want. Yet hidden in the small print and the colour-coded diagrams that went with the consultation was the proposal to allow dogs into a number of previously dog-free areas, which included Arlington Square in St Peters ward. The completely barmy idea being that as long as dog-owners 'pick up' after their dogs, and accept to put their dogs on a lead if asked by an 'authorised person', it is OK to allow dogs anywhere in public parks.

Now I am not against dogs, or people owning dogs, but there is a very practical problem with mixing dogs and toddlers in the same bit of grass. Dog-owners cannot be counted on to 'pick up' 100% of the time, and the chances of one of Islington's 2 dog wardens being in every park in the Borough at the moment when a dog needs to be put on a lead are laughable. And if there is any chance at all of a crawling toddler encountering doggy poop, or being frightened by a boisterous bonzo, parents will not take the risk, and the children will be driven out of the park.

There were other cock-ups, like when the Council tried to email everone who had objected to the misleading wording of the consultation, they managed to 'cc' the list of objectors to everyone. And the final insult was that lead member Lib Dem Ruth Polling, who should have taken responsibility for the decision on the consultation, instead decided to 'delegate' the decision to a senior officer, presumably in an attempt to duck criticism for the shambles.

Quite apart from the unnecessary and unworkable rules that this sham consultation has introduced, it has also succeed in setting dog-owners and non-dog owners against each other, and covered the borough in a new crop of signs advertising fines for any infringements of the new "dog control orders", which must be really intimidating and hostile to dog owners, most of whom have done nothing wrong.

Not only have the Lib Dems cocked up the consultation, they have set residents against each other, and covered the borough in prohibition notices. They have been in power for 8 years now, and should have learned how to deal with issues like this with sensitivity. Obviously they haven't.