The Horsell's Mouth Politics, pedantry and personal interests

Last night, councillors had a briefing on possible options for new council election arrangements and leadership model. The details of this are all in the public domain and were touched on briefly at the executive meeting on September 3.

There are two main questions – should we elect the council as we do now, by thirds three years out of four with a “rest year” in the fourth or should we do as more and more councils do and elect all 36 members once every four years? The first has the advantage of giving voters regular input into council affairs but generally results in less stable council control. The latter reduces the amount of times voters need to visit the polls and favours strong administration – but is that a good thing?

The other question the paper raises is the possibility of elected mayors with power to nominate members to the executive – regardless of party – and who cannot be removed before their term is up. Alternatively, we could adopt a “strong leader” model whereby the leader would be similar to the mayor but have to be a borough councillor elected by the council for a four-year, rather than one-year term.

From reading this, you can see that this is yet another step towards greater centralisation and placing more power and permanence in fewer people. In politics, permanence is the ultimate power - hence its adoption by most of the world’s leading despots throughout history. In the decade from 1999 to 2009, we have moved from the old board system where all councillors had equal say within the chamber and the only trump card was numerical superiority through the executive system that gives six or seven members more powers than the rest to this, which would rest primacy in a single member.

I think both options move the wrong way and I’d like to see a Local Government Act that reduced the power of individual councillors but increased the scope of the decisions on policy and finance that they were allowed to take. This government seems to think it should be the other way around.

On the election arrangements, I’m less sure. My experience of councils elected as a whole is that they tend to be better at making decisions but the strength of opposition within them is diminished. Councils elected by thirds tend to be dominated by short-term political thinking but do have the advantage of strong oppositions who sense that control may be just months away. They are also more open to officer interference – perish the thought.

On balance I favour the elected at once option. I think that it favours stronger members vs stronger officers. Officers are vital to the success of any local authority but it should be the members with whom the agenda rests. I think that is an important principle that overrides concern about opposition strength.

We shall see what our members – who I hope will be allowed to vote freely – think.