In a potential case of Parkinson's law, where organisations give a disproportionate weight to the trivial, Richmond Council's scrutiny hearing into the planned multimillion pound merger with Wandsworth kicked off with the question over what email address staff would use.

The shared staffing agreement between Richmond Council and Wandsworth Council was discussed at a scrutiny meeting last week.

The committee met on September 29 to discuss the management-level merger.

Among the items discussed was the IT strategy for the shared staffing agreement.

Richmond Council chief executive Gillian Norton, who is retiring next year, said: "There is the IT strategy and the formal proposal about the email address which staff in the shared structure will use.

"And, of course, elected representatives will to be attached to their own sovereign council."

Councillor Alexander Ehmann commented: "I think the proposal in front of us creates a new constitutional entity in an online environment."

Councillor Gareth Roberts, speaking after the meeting, said: "We have been told time and time again that one of the tests of the success of this merger is whether residents notice any change to how they deal with the council.

"Yet already we are seeing the creation of a corporate electronic identity which could well be the first step towards creating a single corporate entity; in other words a single merged council."

A report will be delivered to the council's cabinet on October 15.

Coun Roberts also questioned how useful the scrutiny committee actually is.

He said: "In order for the administration to behave in a proper fashion they need to be open to scrutiny."

"The problem is they think there are far too many call-ins but there are fewer than there once were.

"They just don’t like turning up to meetings but I am afraid that is part of process.

"If you sign up to be a councillor that is part of the process in order to say that the proper decisions are reached.

"It seems that want to do away with that and just rubber-stamp things and we need to make sure that mentality goes away.

"It is vital the councillors from either party can hold the administration to account."

Richmond get two directors on new merged senior team

Richmond's chief executive admitted Wandsworth is a bigger borough and said Richmond "did pretty well" to have two directors on the new senior team.

Gillian Norton said: "We need to reflect upon the fact that Wandsworth is much bigger than us, probably in excess of 60 per cent to our under 40 per cent.

"Also there were always going to be more of them than us, really.

"Another way of expressing it would be we did pretty well out of a top team of five, we got two Richmond directors."