Elected Mayor Peter Soulsby has promised on a number of occasions that he will seek to make his decision making transparent and open to scrutiny by councillors and members of the public. We have consistently welcomed this.

However, it will not be easy to keep this promise. He is fighting against decades of local government culture which has kept far too much secret.

Changes from the old committee-based process to the more recent cabinet style of government have added to the problem, distancing the public and press further and further from the decision making. Nearly all decisions over the past few years have been taken behind closed doors with public meetings used to do little more than rubber-stamp them so that the council could claim to comply with legal requirements.

Sir Peter has announced that all of that is to change.

The public is to be told much earlier in the process what it is that the council is considering and will then be invited to meetings and given the chance to question Sir Peter and his cabinet of assistant mayors.

In principle, we welcome this and believe that it could help achieve the promised openness.

However, the new process will need to be kept under review purely because it is new and nobody knows how it will work.

One reader in our article today, for example, makes the point that he would be too nervous to ask a question at a public meeting.

The first of the new-style meetings takes place on Monday – we hope it works and that it helps reconnect the people of Leicester with those making decisions that affect everyone who lives and works in the city.