We are now 21 months into this pandemic and yearn for a return to normalcy. You know, normalcy, where local decisions are made by a local council, where local councillors do the jobs that they were elected to do by the hard-pressed voters of Ceredigion.

Instead of what ought to be the case, there is now Gold Command — non-elected public servants who were awarded temporary authority to make decisions during the darkest days of the pandemic — removing decision-making powers from those elected to sit in the council chamber.

Yes, there was a time when Gold Command needed those powers — and they largely served us well — but the time is long gone when their mandate should have ended.

It is simply time for our elected councillors to resume their normal work and get back to business as usual.

But what does business as usual mean?

Well, for starters, leisure centres up and down the county need to get back to providing community services for the community — swimming lessons and the like.

And where road closures have been out in place to allow for the temporary pedestrianisation of town centres, those need to be fully reviewed.

Business as normal means keeping a close eye on the tax revenues paid in rates and property taxes by businesses and homeowners alike. That means treating those monies with the care, trust and attention they fully deserve. It does not mean spashing cash into a trough to be consumed by inordinate and unjustified salary increases.

Gold Command powers were temporary. They were not granted without oversight, nor without an end in sight.

One of the functions of Cambrian News, as with all newspapers, is to shine a light into the functioning of our local democracies.

That civic and journalistic responsibility is being thwarted, for example, when Gold Command only issues a summary of its decisions or declines to provide media updates on what schools in the local authority area have been hit by coronavirus cases — ironic given that the authority was granted to the executive to effectively communicate through the public health crisis.

Gold Command should not come with gold-value salaries either.

It’s time the council got back to brass tacks. And the sooner the better for all.