A PLANNED experiment with cabinet-style local government in Ryedale is being frozen for six months while the Government makes up its mind about reforms.

The district council was poised to embark on a year-long experiment with a cabinet-style of working, with an executive of seven members and two scrutiny committees made up of the remaining 16 councillors.

But the Government's reform programme was thrown into doubt when the House of Lords sent the Local Government 2000 Bill back to the Commons with an amendment saying councils should be able to keep old-style committees if they wished.

Ryedale's chief executive Harold Mosley told the policy and resources committee the Government remained adamant that changes must be made and the outdated committee system could not deliver.

But he said the Government had also suggested that too many councils had rushed into interim arrangements.

Mr Mosley said: "The recommendation from this committee to full council should be that the experiment be suspended for six months until we see how things pan out because, at the moment, I don't see there is any certainty what the Bill is going to do."

Ryedale's sole Labour councillor Gary Hobbs (Kirkbymoorside) was the only committee member to oppose a freeze.

He said nothing he had heard or read made him doubt the Government would press ahead with moves to split councils' executive and scrutiny functions.

Coun Hobbs insisted: "It's going to happen - it's just a waste of six months."

Ryedale's experimental cabinet-style system would have involved the Conservatives, as the largest group on the hung council, having three places on the executive.

The Liberal Democrats and the Independents would each have had two places, but Labour - in the form of Coun Hobbs - would have lost out.

Committee chairman Coun Keith Knaggs (Con, Stockton & Bossall) suggested an executive-style set-up may not be the best thing for a small, rural council - particularly a hung one.

But he said it would be tactically unwise and quite wrong to suggest the existing committee structure was perfect.

Coun Deborah Aubrook (Con, Kirby Misperton), one of the most recent intake of councillors, said: "I think we owe it to the community to improve and speed up our decision-making process."

She successfully put forward an amendment calling on the structures working party to investigate ways of improving the council's performance within the existing committee system.