Local People

Historically, local government elections in the UK have had a much lower turnout than general elections. Improving turnout will improve the democratic legitimacy of local government.

But participation is much more than just turning up to vote. Local government needs more councillors who are interested in local affairs and have a broad range of relevant experience - and arguably fewer political wannabes who see a stint in local government merely as part of the necessary political career ladder.

If councillors are to remain unpaid, as volunteers from the community who give their time and experience to help improve local decision-making, then council procedures, meeting times etc must be flexible enough to accomodate them.

comments:

Different jobs for different people? --jockox3, Sat, 12 Nov 2005 04:22:03 +0000 reply
Do we need to find people with a "broad range of relevant experience"? Or does the thought of having to worry about the state of some public loo put off people with good knowledge of and ideas in, say, housing issues?

I would say I got interested in housing issues through being a councillor. Since I have been off the council I've continued to work voluntarily setting up Oxfordshire Community Land trusts which, we believe, can deliver better on housing than local authorities can (admittedly under current centrally set restrictions which this discussion hopes to end, perhaps), and I don't particularly want to be a "general councillor" any longer because by comparison, getting involved in someone's campaign to preserve the local victorian pillar box or whatever the local "issue" might be is far less important than my being able to do something about this more pressing problem for a greater number of people.

Perhaps rather we should be able to have different structures for different needs. I don't know whether my local county councillor has any real interest in or experience in education and schools management. They may be a great highways expert though. But if they were standing for the local Schools District Board or Health District Board I'd have more confidence they were actually interested in those particular issues.