Inside the new Reel Cinemas Blackburn A REVIEW into the row over the fiasco of a special meeting to scrutinise the handling of aspects of the contract for a new town centre cinema is being prepared,councillors have heard. Blackburn with Darwen Council Standards Committee was told that the report on what went wrong with the September Call-In would be ready for discussion in March. The original scrutiny meeting in the extension of the lease for the Reel Cinema building in Blackburn town centre from 20 to 25 years became a shambles because of an argument over dates between the council s ruling Labour group and the Conservative opposition who had requested it.
Blackburn with Darwen Council s Standards Committee decided it was needed to avoid mistakes by elected members. Two former Labour councillors are currently sitting as Independents following complaints about their use of social media - Blackburn South-East ward s Cllr Andy Kay and Billinge and Beardwood s Cllr Tasleem Fazal. The committee decided to set up a briefing session for councillors on the issue. Chair Cllr Saima Afzal said previous social media training had failed to cover the whole issue of perceptions, context, equality, making comments online, use of Twitter as members and how we manage that dialogue in the public domain because it is a new arena.