30 April 2023
“Local district elections really matter. The conservatives control the largest share of the pie with over 3,000 seats up for grabs on May 4th and these councils make sometimes super-critical decisions about short, medium and long term planning, support or otherwise for the community arts, or small businesses, whether your streets and pavements get cleaned or not, how much recycling is done, how well it’s done, parks maintenance, public housing and at what rate your local council taxes will be set for the next four years. They make critical decisions about millions of pounds of your taxes that will affect the quality of your life and your community for better or worse but attract, in general very low turn outs on election day. Postal voting has ballooned since the pandemic. Of those registered to vote usually less than half however either post in or show up to vote. The sense that “it makes no difference” and that they are “all failing us” is palpable. In rural elections particularly there is too often the sense that you have to vote tactically with a nose peg for the candidate most likely to defeat the party you want least. Bear in mind that in many cases a few dozen votes might be all it takes to completely change the composition of your council. It’s the one time where small parties, alliances and independents might actually get elected and transform things locally.
Furthermore, and disturbingly, a research report in 2021 said that up to half our councils are insufficiently transparent and are open to potential conflicts of interest. Powerful planning decisions made behind closed doors and consultations where the public simply don’t believe, often with some justification that the fix is anyway in. None of this is healthy.
Candidates must run their elections on a shoe-string budget and because these posts are *unpaid, [Editorial correction - I’ve been told that there is a modest stipend - I didn’t know] , candidates are massively over-represented either by local vested interests or by retirees. In many wards, a candidate would be overspending their budget and in breach of the electoral commission’s spending rules just by sending their leaflets out by second class post. Young people tend to be underrepresented. It’s worryingly ramshackle.
It shouldn’t be like this. Central Government have spent the last 13 years reducing payments to local councils leaving many very cash strapped, and too often in overly-cosy dependent relationships with developers, who serve only the bottom line of their profit and loss sheets. It needs cleaning up. It needs reform and it needs vision. All are, in most cases, badly lacking.
Unlike national politics it’s not so simple to know much about who the local councillors are, what interests they serve, where their allegiances lie, or where their strengths and weaknesses lie. The political flags they fly under can be deceptive too. Some Lib-Dems will more zealously pursue housing estates in green spaces than their conservative counterparts, others won’t. You need to know in more detail what they are about locally. You, as a voter have a duty of care to find out from reputable sources, as best you can, who has been running your council these last four years and if you want change or more of the same and then you need to use your precious vote wisely.
I should declare an interest - I am running for the first time in my life in a broad-church alliance of independents who have pragmatically formed a small P party calling themselves The South Devon Alliance, for the sake of electoral visibility, for our local district council of Teignbridge, currently marginally dominated by Lib-Dem councillors, who in our view have been merely enacting the policies of the previous conservative administration, sometimes hand wringing along the way but in practice, in disappointingly unaccountable ways. There’s been far too much nodding and winking and “business as usual.” We can hopefully deliver a little much needed oxygen into what on earth is going on and above all to start listening more to the electorate and local residents and lifting the veil on all practices. I want to know in detail what they are spending public money on and why. We need less squabbling and much much more effectiveness.”
