DEEPENING recession, council reorganisation, and a new masterplan is finally unveiled for a flagging town centre. But at the town hall, it seems, there is nothing to discuss.

Macclesfield Borough Council cancelled one of only six meetings a year where all 60 councillors gather on borough business, earlier this month.

The reason given was that there was "insufficient business" – and only one agenda item.

Yet issues marked "pressing" in the town hall inbox include making dozens of expected staff redundancies as MBC approaches the 16-week countdown to its axing and the transition to Cheshire East Council on April 1, 2009.

The severance bill to pay off staff at MBC, as well as Cheshire County Council, and Crewe and Nantwich and Congleton borough councils, is expected to be close to the £5.5million mark.

And the transition costs to Cheshire East will cost MBC alone more than a million pounds.

But when pressed, an MBC spokesman told the Express it was deemed uneconomical to pay the estimated £1,700 in councillor expenses for such a slim agenda.

Councillor Richard Watson, leader of the Labour group at MBC, said he sensed a growing feeling of "why should we bother?" and "dislocation" among town hall employees.

"The feeling is that work is being put to one side because someone else will be dealing with it after the change," he said.

"I was surprised and unimpressed when the meeting was cancelled."

Independent Coun Brendan Murphy called the decision "shocking".

"Here we have officials making decisions that there is nothing worth talking about," he said. "A full council meeting is all about democracy – it’s a chance for us to ask questions of the council in public.  There are issues of redundancies, the new council, the town centre, and an apparent increase in rats, as a result of fortnightly bin collections. These all need discussing."

The last full meeting, in which the town centre redevelopment was questioned and debated at length, was in early September. There will now not be another until January, 2009.

Independent Coun James Nicholas said: "I feel there’s an element of the officers winding down – when there is still plenty to do and lots of issues that can and should be being discussed."

But MBC Lib Dem leader Coun Ainsley Arnold said: "It’s certainly not a case of all leave the town hall and last one out turn the lights off. That may be the case on March 31, but not yet. The council works on a committee basis, and the main decision-making arm is the cabinet."

Julie Openshaw, MBC’s monitoring officer, had emailed the heads of each party asking if they objected to cancelling the meeting as there were "no items which need to be taken, and no motions to discuss".

A spokeswoman for MBC said: "The full council meeting was cancelled because we had insufficient business to be transacted by the council.

"There is ongoing business, but that is being dealt with by the various council committees, and major ongoing issues are being transferred to Cheshire East. Also there are significant costs that we did not want to fund; there are transport expenses for all the councillors, printing and distribution of all the documents, officers’ time, and councillors’ meals prior to the meeting.  We emailed the heads of each group, and there were no issues raised by the groups consulted, so we cancelled the meeting (with Mayor of Macclesfield Coun Thelma Jackson’s authorisation)."

But Coun Murphy disagreed, saying councillors had insufficient time to reply.