THE growth of quangos and the diminution of the role of elected councils raises serious questions about accountability, a former Tavistock mayor warned last week.

Cllr John Wright, chairman of the town council's finance and general purposes committee, quoted advice given at a recent meeting on how money might be obtained for developing Tavistock, as evidence of the growth of quangos.

He read: 'The RWP announces that Tavistock will be invited to join the M and CTI. The RDA will form a brokering table of agencies with access to funds, namely GOSW, CA, RDA, HA with help from the DAPC and CVS.'

Cllr Wright said he did not know what a brokering table was and had only a 'hazy idea' about the 'shower of acronyms', but he did know that behind each there lurked a quango — 'a group of people who may be well-meaning but are not elected and are accountable to no-one but themselves, other quangos and indirectly to the government which appointed them.'

He added that a quango state was emerging and there should be 'an urgent review of the principle and practice of appointed and unelected government in the UK'.

Money for local developments had increasingly been diverted to unelected and voluntary bodies, and he believed it wasn't a coincidence that local council elections had so few voters — only 19 per cent at Tavistock's most recent by-election — or that it was harder 'to retain councillors of quality and independent mind'.

Cllr Ted Sherrell said the growth of quangos posed 'the greatest threat to grass root democracy'.

He added: 'We have things foist upon us by quangos, but if they go wrong it is the elected bodies who pick up the tab.'

The council had been asked to depute a member to sit on the Tamar Valley Market and Coastal Town Initiative steering group. Cllr Betty Batchelor said that at a meeting she had attended she had been informed that Tavistock was represented by WestDen, and there appeared to have been 'a neglect of looking into who represented' the town council.

The council agreed to submit a motion on the growth of quangos for debate at the annual meeting of the Association of Larger Local Councils.