PLANS to slash the number of Isle of Wight Council meetings, enabling members to avoid answering questions from the public and make decisions in private, have been slammed as undemocratic.
The proposals, published less than a week after the Tories won the Isle of Wight Council election with a significant majority, will go before the first meeting of the new council on Wednesday, May 17.
They include reducing the number of full council meetings from nine to six and reintroducing delegated decisions, where executive members are able to make decisions without the approval of other councillors.
If the proposals are approved, executive members would no longer have to report to full council, and would instead respond to members' questions as and when they were asked. The questions and answers would then be published on the council's website.
One person, the scrutiny committee chair, would have the final say on whether decisions should be 'called in' to be challenged, and named votes would be scrapped. 
Concerns have been raised by Labour Cllr Geoff Brodie (formerly Lumley), who described the plans as a 'Tory attack on democracy.'
“We had a hint of the Tories' intolerance of democracy at County hall before the local elections, when they combined with UKIP and others to block any discussion of a return to a full committee system of governance.
“The new leader told me he was seeking less confrontation at County Hall in this administration. Frankly, this attack on transparency and accountability is not the best way to achieve that aim.”
Conservative leader Cllr Dave Stewart said Cllr Brodie was welcome to share his views at next week's full council meeting.
“I think it is important we provide the mechanisms that will enable us to get away from the negative rhetoric which has dogged the council chamber for the last four years and start working together for the good of the Island,” he said.
“I shall be supporting those constitutional  changes I believe will enable us as a council to focus on key issues such as economic development, effective financial management and environmental protection, all of which we included in our manifesto when we went to the electorate and received a clear mandate from them to lead the council.”