Got It!

It has fallen into our hands.

The Brief, that is. The Brief through which Sutton Cold field Town Centre is to be revitalised. Is to be transformed into the Solihull of the North East Birmingham.

It is almost a perfect document. It is cogent, well argued, balanced, extremely literate. One can see in an instant that this would be the sort of document which would bring out the presentation skills of the very cream of the aspiring Consultancy Crop.

And it has.

The chosen ones are Broadway Mayan who have forced themselves to the front of the pack and have scooped the £100,000 worth of council business. And good luck to them.

Nightwatchman is in absolutely no doubt that the notions which will emerge from said Broadway Mayan will be worth every penny of the rate payer’s money.

Curious business this. Writing a brief so that the briefed can come back in appropriate terms and specify what it is you were thinking of in the first place. Consultants are a bit like that. They supply the veneer on those half baked ideas which might otherwise get laughed out of court or which are so blindingly obvious that you would be embarrassed to find them coming out of your mouth.

So it is better, and safer and a lot less embarrassing to inflate an enormous bubble around the entire edifice, spent a shed load of money and destroy several medium sized innocent forests producing volumes of justification. How could one possibly entertain the suspicion that the real driver is that no one, especially not Rob Pocock could dream of accusing Councillors of not thinking the thing through.

This is a very expensive method of avoiding the rather tedious chore of leadership. Were Councillor Howard of sterner stuff, he might have ventured his opinion on how Sutton ought to be. He might have placed himself at the head of the column and marched off toward the sound of gunfire and the clash of ideas splintering on the anvil of experience.

He might have been prepared to risk publishing his enthusiasm in search of creating a better town.

Then again, perhaps there is something to be said for Consultants.

Nightwatchman