I’m a county councillor. I don’t think I disagree with anything you say.
On bigger patches, there is more to it than just bigger areas. Multi tier systems are very bottom heavy. We have 70 councillors for the county, one per division. But then the district councils have multi member wards that are on smaller geographical areas than county…
I’m a county councillor. I don’t think I disagree with anything you say.
On bigger patches, there is more to it than just bigger areas. Multi tier systems are very bottom heavy. We have 70 councillors for the county, one per division. But then the district councils have multi member wards that are on smaller geographical areas than county divisions - so our district council has 48 councillors covering the same geographical area as 12 county councillors and my division covers the same area that 5 district councillors do. County councillors typically have more complex casework (social care) and more casework (potholes) and nobody to share the workload with and yet collectively the equivalent district councillors are paid twice as much as I am. Residents know who I am but it can be more tricky to know who your district councillor is or which one to approach when there are several. And it allows some councillors to shirk their duties because it’s not all on them so you end up with bums on seats at that lower level. And this doesn’t help with the public feeling enamoured by local councils and councillors.
So addressing the imbalance and making councils less bottom heavy in terms of where the majority of councillors sit could help even without having to do a massive restructure.
One of the other reasons people know so little is because local media don’t report what is happening adequately. The local democracy reporter system has made it better, but it isn’t perfect. I recently led a debate on trying to improve the repairs of potholes, it had specific suggestions, there was a proper debate, it was voted down by the controlling party, and I issued a decent press release to the local media. Local radio interviewed me briefly but despite running letters and stories about potholes all winter every winter (because everybody loves moaning about potholes) the local paper didn’t publish a single thing about the debate at all either online or in print. Not only do I think they are letting the public down by not reporting council activities, this then puts the onus on me to tell everybody what I’m doing - and I’m good at Facebook and good at leaflets so it happens in my patch - but why should the onus on reporting to residents what the councils and councillors they pay for and vote for are doing be left entirely to the whim, approach and particular politics of the individual councillor?
Another thing you don’t mention that would work is to pay better. Controversial with the public at first for sure but I genuinely think it would help. I can only do this role as a youngish councillor (only relative to other councillors, I’m in my 40s and about 5th youngest on my council) because I have a freelance job on top that pays well and allows me the flexibility needed and I have a partner on a good salary. Most people can’t do it until retirement when they have free time and the allowance is then seen as a nice boost to a pension. But is it any wonder that things can be a bit stale and uninteresting to the public and decisions can be poor when it doesn’t have the diversity and energy and vitality that a true mix of people would bring?
This is all super interesting! Agree with everything you say. I think the media point is interesting - that’s why I think larger LAs would inevitably create more incentives for journalists to pay attention and cover them, even in a deeply terrible media environment. (Like how there are real journalists covering the London Assembly, because it is big/powerful enough.)
Also agree councillors should probably be paid more! This isn’t directly analogous, but I used to be the trustee of a small-ish charity, brought in because I was about 50 years younger than the average age of the others. And given the time commitments, it quickly became apparent why the other trustees were almost all retired.
I live in Manchester and our councillors are paid enough that most of them can switch to part-time at their jobs and be a councillor.
I'm a Lib Dem and back when we were winning a lot of seats locally (ie before the 2010 coalition), I looked into going for the council seriously and figured I could work about three days a week and then spend the rest of the time as a councillor, but I'd have to have complete control of the timetable - so I could attend the council meetings I wanted to, then dive into a coffee shop to work for a couple of hours and then back to the meeting.
While that is (just) financially possible, it's also the case that there are a lot of jobs where you wouldn't have that sort of flexibility.
Manchester is one of the best paid councils in the country. The basic allowance was £18,841 for 2022/23, which is not really enough to do it full time (council Leader is £65,857; deputy leader and cabinet members are £38,616). You can see why British politicians treat moving from Leader of a council to Member of Parliament as an upgrade - even for the best-paid, it's £20K more money.
I’m a county councillor. I don’t think I disagree with anything you say.
On bigger patches, there is more to it than just bigger areas. Multi tier systems are very bottom heavy. We have 70 councillors for the county, one per division. But then the district councils have multi member wards that are on smaller geographical areas than county divisions - so our district council has 48 councillors covering the same geographical area as 12 county councillors and my division covers the same area that 5 district councillors do. County councillors typically have more complex casework (social care) and more casework (potholes) and nobody to share the workload with and yet collectively the equivalent district councillors are paid twice as much as I am. Residents know who I am but it can be more tricky to know who your district councillor is or which one to approach when there are several. And it allows some councillors to shirk their duties because it’s not all on them so you end up with bums on seats at that lower level. And this doesn’t help with the public feeling enamoured by local councils and councillors.
So addressing the imbalance and making councils less bottom heavy in terms of where the majority of councillors sit could help even without having to do a massive restructure.
One of the other reasons people know so little is because local media don’t report what is happening adequately. The local democracy reporter system has made it better, but it isn’t perfect. I recently led a debate on trying to improve the repairs of potholes, it had specific suggestions, there was a proper debate, it was voted down by the controlling party, and I issued a decent press release to the local media. Local radio interviewed me briefly but despite running letters and stories about potholes all winter every winter (because everybody loves moaning about potholes) the local paper didn’t publish a single thing about the debate at all either online or in print. Not only do I think they are letting the public down by not reporting council activities, this then puts the onus on me to tell everybody what I’m doing - and I’m good at Facebook and good at leaflets so it happens in my patch - but why should the onus on reporting to residents what the councils and councillors they pay for and vote for are doing be left entirely to the whim, approach and particular politics of the individual councillor?
Another thing you don’t mention that would work is to pay better. Controversial with the public at first for sure but I genuinely think it would help. I can only do this role as a youngish councillor (only relative to other councillors, I’m in my 40s and about 5th youngest on my council) because I have a freelance job on top that pays well and allows me the flexibility needed and I have a partner on a good salary. Most people can’t do it until retirement when they have free time and the allowance is then seen as a nice boost to a pension. But is it any wonder that things can be a bit stale and uninteresting to the public and decisions can be poor when it doesn’t have the diversity and energy and vitality that a true mix of people would bring?
This is all super interesting! Agree with everything you say. I think the media point is interesting - that’s why I think larger LAs would inevitably create more incentives for journalists to pay attention and cover them, even in a deeply terrible media environment. (Like how there are real journalists covering the London Assembly, because it is big/powerful enough.)
Also agree councillors should probably be paid more! This isn’t directly analogous, but I used to be the trustee of a small-ish charity, brought in because I was about 50 years younger than the average age of the others. And given the time commitments, it quickly became apparent why the other trustees were almost all retired.
I live in Manchester and our councillors are paid enough that most of them can switch to part-time at their jobs and be a councillor.
I'm a Lib Dem and back when we were winning a lot of seats locally (ie before the 2010 coalition), I looked into going for the council seriously and figured I could work about three days a week and then spend the rest of the time as a councillor, but I'd have to have complete control of the timetable - so I could attend the council meetings I wanted to, then dive into a coffee shop to work for a couple of hours and then back to the meeting.
While that is (just) financially possible, it's also the case that there are a lot of jobs where you wouldn't have that sort of flexibility.
Manchester is one of the best paid councils in the country. The basic allowance was £18,841 for 2022/23, which is not really enough to do it full time (council Leader is £65,857; deputy leader and cabinet members are £38,616). You can see why British politicians treat moving from Leader of a council to Member of Parliament as an upgrade - even for the best-paid, it's £20K more money.