Community Governance Review - stage 2 - Leighton-Linslade

Responses from consultation

Town council: no proposal received to stage 1 of the consultation. However, the communication to the committee can be viewed in the General Purposes Committee papers.

Joint cllrs Leighton - Linslade TC (see pages 208 to 218 of appendix B)

32 responses

View the Leighton-Linslade Town Council Letter of Representation (PDF)

Comments:

“The disparity in the ratio of councillors to residents is 5x the Ctrl Beds average - that’s not exactly how democracy should work.”

“The number of councillors per resident is much above average and only going to increase with more residents. Young people 16–25 particularly are not well represented or catered for in Leighton-Linslade. Immigrants as well are not represented, I think due to fear of racism, islamophobia, etc. in Bedfordshire which is a well-founded fear. With a larger council, we could have more diversity of representation.”

“I think all wards in Leighton-Linslade should go up by 3–5 councillors each to get them to average of 300 residents per councillor – that is closer to the number of people that one person can get to know. Some of those wards should be split up – I can’t speak for other wards as I don’t know them as well but for St Barnabas – we should have a split so that the roads all adjoining Stoke Road inc Bossington Lane, St Martins etc. are in one ward. I think the Rivers – Ouzel and Clipstone Brook – should be represented as a ward which all residents of Leighton-Linslade get to vote on but only contains non-human residents. Or you could put it together with the canal and the humans are those who live on the water e.g. common canal boats – seems fair.”

“Need to protect parish councils from getting too cliquey by co-opting people and publicising elections better.”

Feedback received through the public consultation indicated a preference to retain the current level of representation and to make no other changes. This view has been considered alongside the working group’s rationale to ensure that any final draft recommendation reflects the aims of the terms of reference as well as the views of the community.

Draft recommendations

1. that the parish name of Leighton-Linslade should remain unchanged
2. that the number of parish councillors on Leighton-Linslade Town Council remains at 21
3. incorporate the residential development of Clipstone Park, Stearn Land, Leedon and the Pastures into the parish of Leighton-Linslade (Planets Ward)

Reason for recommendations

The recommendations reflect the aims of the terms of reference to ensure effective and convenient local government through fair representation of residents while maintaining proportionality across all wards.