Are there too many councillors in Salford?

DOES Salford have too many councillors?

That was the question troubling council members earlier this week as they discussed a council boundary review.

A report prepared ahead of Wednesday’s council meeting – which was endorsed by the cabinet earlier this month, but described as a ‘Labour’ document by some Tory members on Wednesday – called for Salford’s representation of 20 wards, each served by three councillors, to stay the same.

That’s even though the population of some districts is forecast to rise significantly.

Conservative councillors in the chamber said they would be preparing their own boundary submission, with some members saying they hadn’t decided how many councillors they favoured.

Labour’s deputy city mayor, John Merry, said Tory members were behaving like a ‘secret society’ for failing to explain their position in the meeting, but he suggested that some Conservatives wanted to see a reduction in councillor numbers.

Conservative Robin Garrido said the city mayor now makes a lot of decisions that were ‘previously taken by councillors’, and said that means representatives can spend more time in the community because ‘some of the pressure has been taken off’.

And Tory councillor Iain Lindley, who said he had yet to make up his mind on the council size, agreed that the role of councillors had changed since the introduction of the city mayor.