Information is the key to improving our democracy
IN his first column as leader of the Conservative Party in Rossendale, Councillor David Foxcroft revealed there will shortly be a review of how Rossendale Council works.
The council will, Cllr Foxcroft said, look at things like how often elections should be held, and how many councillors Rossendale should have.
The Conservatives are going to propose we only go to the polls once every four years, similar to elections to Lancashire County Council.
Their argument is that it saves money doing that.
And they have a point. Elections are expensive to run, and disruptive for the council as well.
And when less than a third of people can be bothered to exercise their democratic right to vote, should the council really try and hold elections every year?
But surely part of the problem with local election turnout is the lack of information most of us receive from candidates before the election itself.
If you live in a ‘safe seat’ - one unlikely to change from one party to another
- pretty much the only election information you’ll get is your polling card, and a generic missive from Conservative or Labour Party HQ.
If councillors - be it Tory or Labour - really want to improve Rossendale Council’s democratic processes, they should surely
enshrine into the council’s constitution that if you stand for council as part of a political party, you commit to knocking every door and writing to every household before the election.
And once elected, you write - be it via an email or a leaflet - to every household
at least quarterly saying what you have been up to, the issues you are focusing on and the impact you are having (or not, if you are finding other councillors opposing what you want to do).
Reducing our opportunities to vote from three years in every four to one in every four seems a surefire way to make people even less engaged with the electoral system.
There is a counterpoint, however.
And that’s that if we voted just once every four years, more people would vote because they know it’s the only chance they get to have their say for the next four years.
Would that make issues such as the Empty Homes Scandal, which has now cost more than £7m of council money under Labour’s watch, more of an election issue?
Labour continues to do all it can to keep this issue out of the spotlight, with council finance reports now only making passing reference to a project which just keeps draining money from the council budgets.
Or the constant cuts and under-funding from Conservative government to councils such as ours, which have been going for a decade now?
This would make uncomfortable positioning for local Tories, who on one hand opposed local council tax rises (but not at the county council, where they are in charge), but also urge us all to vote for successive Tory governments which have taken millions of pounds of funding away from Rossendale Council.
Do we have too many councillors?
How do you tell?
But it has always struck me as odd that you have two to three councillors covering one ward.
Wouldn’t it make sense to have the same number of councillors, but increase the number of wards, so that each councillor served a smaller area? That, surely, would be more democratic.
As ever when it comes to the council looking at how local government should be run, the biggest watchout will be seeing whether turkeys are prepared to vote for Christmas.