Agenda item

Report of the Cabinet Member Corporate Services.

The item was introduced by Councillor Jon Walklett, Cabinet Member Corporate Services. The report set out the findings of a Cabinet Member working group set up to review the Council size and electoral cycle. Following three meetings of the working group and a member seminar, the group concluded that they did not wish to make any recommendations regarding initiating a review of Council size at this stage. A similar argument applied to the community governance review where their recommendation was that further work should not be progressed at this stage.  Regarding the future electoral cycle, the group could not reach a consensus. In order to facilitate a debate by Council he proposed that recommendation 3 in the report should request Council to resolve not to commence the process to move to a four-year electoral cycle. In proposing this recommendation, he highlighted to members that the proposed annual savings of £26,000 p.a resulting from the move to four yearly elections would not kick in until 2018. He indicated that those members on his side of the chamber had considered all the pros and cons set out in the report and had put the needs of the people of Cheltenham before party politics in deciding to give their support to maintaining the current two-year cycle.

Councillor Garnham requested that a separate vote be taken on each part of the recommendations and indicated that members would be requesting a recorded vote on recommendation 3.

Councillor Seacome, speaking as a member of the working group, said that he had originally been in favour of a two-year cycle but he had been convinced by the arguments that a four-year cycle would be more advantageous. He could not see any justification for the frequency of borough elections being different to those for parliamentary elections. He considered that the by-election issue was almost an irrelevance in view of the number of by-elections that had been required in recent years.   He was convinced that the four-year cycle would enable better planning and would be better for officers supporting the implementation of Council policy. The move to a four-year cycle would also provide savings for local parties as well as savings for the authority. The issue of member continuity had been raised but he felt that if the right candidate had been chosen they should be able to slot into their work on the council fairly easily. He encouraged members to have a full debate on this issue and not be constrained by party politics.

In the debate that followed a number of members spoke in support of four yearly elections.  Councillor Garnham, as leader of the Conservative group, had been a member of the working group and he felt it would encourage a greater turnout at elections and address the current decline in voter turnout by giving the public something to vote on as parties set out their four-year manifesto. He encouraged members not to sit on the fence and to take what he saw as a bold decision to initiate change.

Other members referred to the strong arguments set out by Bristol City Council in the case study set out in section 6.2 of the report. Many members felt there was no justification for the borough council to have a two-year cycle whilst MPS, MEPS and County Councillors were all elected on a four-year cycle.

One member felt that council was increasingly becoming an irrelevance as the scope of what councillors could actually influence was being diminished as councils were stripped of their powers and finances and services were being taken out of council control and into commisioning arrangements. He highlighted the case of Bristol where the city council maintained a whole range of services that could help shape the town and therefore would engage the interest of the electorate. In his view however hard members worked they would never convince the electorate in Cheltenham of their ability to make changes to their local community.  As such the argument for maintaining the current number of councillors was diminished.

Councillor Jordan, as Leader of the Council, had also been a member of the working group. He said it had been a useful exercise and he was pleased that the member seminar had been so well attended. He accepted that the options for the electoral cycle was a finely balanced argument but in his view the cost savings that would be achieved by a move to four-year elections were minimal. He felt the current system of 10 county council divisions and 20 wards in Cheltenham worked well. In the next three years, potential housing allocation would trigger the need for boundary changes and therefore he would support the first two recommendations in the report.

Other members spoke in support of maintaining the current two-year election cycle and rejected the inference that they were sitting on the fence in holding that view. They put forward the argument that it enabled residents to have their say on a more frequent basis and four years could be a long time to wait. They highlighted that the 2 yearly borough elections currently attracted a higher turnout than the county or parliamentary elections. One member suggested that turnout only increases when there is a particular issue in a ward which the public feel strongly about. A number of members felt that the argument for change had not been made and in the words of one member "why change if it's not broken?"  Councillor Godwin as leader of the PAB, had also been a member of the working group. He considered that the cost savings of four yearly elections were relatively small and the council should be looking elsewhere for higher cost savings particularly in the cost of printed reports and documents that the council produces. He had no confidence that the percentage of people turning out to vote would increase and it would continue to be the same 20 to 30% of the electorate who took the trouble to vote. 

A member who had experience of both the two-year and four-year cycle, felt the two-year cycle did provide valuable opportunities for him to engage with his constituents He did not think that democracy should be diminished for the sake of the cost savings set out which he compared to the cost of an Echo for a year.

A member suggested that it was a moral issue as much as a financial one that councillors should not be exempt from change. For this reason he had written to the working group setting out his views for reducing the number of councillors to 30 and supporting all out elections every four years. It was right that the council should slim down the political structure not just because of the financial savings but because there was a public expectation that it would be appropriate to do so.

The Mayor advised that a separate vote would be taken on each of the recommendations and upon seven members rising in their seats a recorded vote was requested on recommendation 3.

Upon a vote it was RESOLVED that:

1. A review of council size will not be progressed at this stage.
   Voting: For 29, Against 2, Abstentions 1
   
   
2. The community governance review will not be progressed at this time for the reasons set out in paragraph 4.6 of the report.
   Voting: For 29 with 1 Abstention
   
   
3. The process to move to a four year electoral   cycle would not be progressed at this stage.
   Voting:
   For 21 - Councillors Barnes, Britter, Coleman, Fisher, Flynn, Godwin, Colin Hay, Rowena Hay, Holliday, Jordan, Lansley, Massey, McKinlay, Reid, Stennett, Stewart, Sudbury, Thornton, Walklett, Wheeler and Williams.  
   Against 11 – Councillors Chard, Driver, Fletcher, Garnham, Hall, Harman, Rawson, Regan, Ryder, Seacome and Smith.