THE first key meeting of the body appointed to oversee the decisions of Swindon Council's cabinet ended in farce last night.

The Scrutiny Commission Review Board is expected to call in any decisions made by the cabinet that it feels were questionable.

But last night's meeting was over in just a few minutes after members decided to postpone the meeting for 24 hours.

Councillors from all three political groups attacked officers for not providing the minutes of last Wednesday's cabinet meeting until moments before the meeting started.

They ruled that they could not effectively scrutinise the decisions made unless they had ample opportunity to study the minutes.

They voted five to two in favour of postponing the meeting.

Former mayor and Labour councillor, David Cox (Toothill and Westlea), said: "It is unacceptable to receive these minutes at the meeting. I'm not prepared to sit here and rubber stamp these decisions without having chance to look through them."

The review board was due to consider such important decisions as deploying a street warden in the central area, scrapping charges for the Golden Jubilee street parties, calling for an emergency meeting with Swindon Town Football Club over its rent and rates debts and the approval of the council's capital spending programme.

The review board has been in existence for two years, but there was also a ratification committee in place to oversee the cabinet's decisions.

With that committee now removed, the review board's role has become crucial to the democratic process of decision-making at the council.

It will now meet again at 6pm tonight to decide whether any decisions should be sent back to the cabinet to be reconsidered.

Coun Maurice Fanning (Lab, Gorse Hill and Pinehurst) said: "I wasn't even in the country last week when these decisions were made and the minutes have arrived rather tardily.

"I need to spend some time reading these through for me to make some sort of reasoned judgement. I'm not prepared to rubber stamp or send anything back until I at least know what the implications are of these decisions."

Deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, Coun Wendy Johnson (Old Town and Lawn), felt that, despite the lateness of the papers, the board should have carried out its business last night.

She said: "When I was chair of the review board last year, we got used to working like this because the ratification committee often happened the night before our meeting.

"We very often had less than 12 hours to familiarise ourselves with the papers. But this is unacceptable because the cabinet meeting happened last week."

"I accept this is a fairly unique situation because we don't usually have two bank holidays, but I do believe this board should have the minutes within 24 hours of the cabinet meeting."