The most common criticism of local Council Officers is not that they are slavishly carrying out the true intentions of the locally democratically elected Councillors; quite the contrary. The criticism is they are not the “faceless automatons” of the will of the local people but are pursuing an agenda of what they think is right based on diktat from other levels of government or subjective ‘guardian / bbc think’ left of centre world view.

To quote Matthew Parris from, behind the paywall, Times – under the headline “Put local councils in the dustbin of history”

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/matthewparris/article3063264.ece

He says, “Permanent warfare between (on the one hand) self-perpetuating autocracies of local government officers whose tame councillors wouldn’t say boo to a goose-stepping chief planning officer…”

and

“The reason why councillors don’t reliably use the levers they have is that they are largely unpaid part-timers in (often) only nominal control of a well-fuelled and permanent machine of full-time, professional local government officers with about as much democratic responsiveness as the Zanzibar police.”

So “faceless” – yes, often and purposefully to hide from public scruting but “automotons” – perlease!