Councillor in call for a change in the law over committees

A NON-ALIGNED Independent councillor has called for a change in the law to give elected members with his status the right to sit on local authority committees.

Nigel Dix, who represents Blackwood on Caerphilly County Borough Council, was told that because he did not belong to the authority’s official Independent group, he could not join the planning committee, as he wanted to.

The rights of councillors in England and Wales to have committee membership were established by the Local Government and Housing Act 1989.

Before that, ruling political groups could lawfully exclude all opposition councillors from committees if they chose to do so.

But while the 1989 Act gave greater rights to councillors outside the ruling party, it was only members of formally established political groups who had the right to committee membership.

Recently Cllr Dix found himself having to argue his case with senior council officers.

Last week, in a report to a full council meeting, the authority’s head of legal services and monitoring officer Robert Tranter explained how the council had a legal duty to appoint councillors to committees based on their group’s proportion of the total number of councillors.

However, Mr Tranter stated: “An Independent councillor not in a group is not... entitled to seats on committees and is not taken into account for the purposes of the political balance calculations.”

Cllr Dix said: “I should have just as much right to join a committee as any councillor who belongs to a party group.

“These days many people do not have the same party allegiances as in the past, and they are more prepared to vote for candidates who are not in political parties.

“Mr Tranter told me the only way I could become a committee member was by getting permission from the leader of the Independent group, to which I don’t belong.

“I have checked out the 1989 legislation and the law should be changed so that non-aligned councillors like me have a right to committee membership.”

In the event, the leader of the Independent group, Cllr Kevin Etheridge, decided to let Cllr Dix join the planning committee because no one else wanted to do so.

But Cllr Dix said the issue was bigger than him, and he would campaign for a change in the law.