By Cllr Rachel Burgess
If you live in Wokingham Borough you will be receiving a leaflet from our Conservative Council on changes to our local electoral system.
This includes a consultation on whether to move from local elections every three years out of four, to once every four years.
I have serious concerns about the changes favoured by the Conservatives and their Council, serious concerns about their leaflet, and serious concerns about the way the consultation is being run.
The Conservatives wish to move to “all-out” elections every four years, a move that would represent an erosion of our local democracy.
I can only assume that Wokingham Borough Conservatives are in favour of elections every four years because they cannot tolerate regularly being held accountable at the ballot box.
However, they appear to believe they are above scrutiny – this week in Council, in response to my scrutiny of the Conservatives’ strategy, I was literally told, by two separate councillors, to leave Wokingham if I did not like what the Council is doing.
I am up for re-election in May, and I expect to be held accountable on my record as a councillor.
Like any councillor I should rightly be judged on my support for residents, my record of standing up for them, acting on their behalf and speaking up for their interests and concerns.
Elections every four years inevitably makes councillors, and in particular the ruling party, more out of touch. It allows them to do what they wish for three-and-a-half years before finally talking to residents in the run up to an election.
Councillors should be talking and listening to their residents all year round – not once every four years.
Four-year cycles allow the ruling party, in this case the Conservatives, to make unpopular decisions without any electoral accountability for years to come.
Under this system, if residents feel their councillors are not doing a good job, there is nothing they can do about it for four long years.
By contrast, elections three out of every four years keeps political groups regularly accountable to the electorate.
So it is obvious – we should retain elections in three years out of four.
The wording of the taxpayer-funded leaflet is itself concerning.
It suggests the electoral cycle is the main issue of the independent local government boundary commission review – but this is not the case.
In reality the real crux of the review lies in the redrawing of ward boundaries, which is the next phase of the commission’s work.
Wokingham Borough has a mixture of one-, two- and three-councillor wards. The current ward boundaries have been in place since 2004 yet, with all the recent house building, the populations of some wards has rocketed.
For example, Maiden Erlegh ward has 6,700 voters and three councillors. My ward of Norreys has 8,300 voters and also three councillors, amounting to almost 25% more voters per councillor.
So, the boundaries have to be re-drawn. Falling out of this process is the opportunity to re-visit the how often we have elections.
And finally we come to the consultation itself, the wording of which is biased in favour of elections every four years.
The question posed is: “Would you prefer to vote for your local councillor once every four years or every three years out of four?” An alternative way to put this would be: “Would you prefer the Council listened to you all the time or once every four years?”
The leaflet uses different language to describe the two options, with the Conservatives’ favoured outcome being described directly, while the alternative option includes caveats such as the benefits “have been stated as” – this bias leads the reader to believe the arguments are not factual but merely speculation.
There is no security on the online survey – you can complete it as many times as you like. While people with access to the internet can vote as many times as they want, people without access to the internet will not be able to take part at all.
It is as absurd as it is unfair.
This, combined with the bias of the descriptions, render it utterly meaningless as a measure of opinion.
The leaflet also refers to some savings. Clearly, having fewer elections will be cheaper. However the leaflet quotes a substantial figure described as “less tangible savings” – the description alone tells you this figure is highly questionable.
It is vital we retain elections three years out of four to keep our politicians accountable – and we cannot allow this sham of a consultation to support a lack of property scrutiny of Wokingham’s Conservatives.
So please, choose option B – No to an unaccountable Council.
Rachel Burgess is the Wokingham Labour group leader, and ward councillor for Norreys. She is standing for re-election on May 5
