What did the General Purposes Committee recommend?
The General Purposes Committee approved a proposal to reduce the number of Arlesey town councillors from 12 to 7. This recommendation is what we are now asking for your views on.
The General Purposes Committee also agreed to shorten the stage two consultation period from 12 weeks to 8.
The reason for this was laid out in the report for General Purposes Committee, which read:
CGRs are required to be undertaken in two stages. The first stage was a consultation on whether to reduce the number of councillors from the current 12 members to 7 members and was carried out from the 20 April until the 14 June 2022. The proposed second stage consultation is currently scheduled to take place over 12 weeks commencing 5 September with a completion date of 27 November 2022. However, and notwithstanding the extensive promotion of the consultation by both this Council and the Town Council (press releases, e-mail bulletins and social media updates on Facebook and Twitter) the lack of concern the proposal has attracted is demonstrated by a comparatively small number of respondents (ten) at stage one. Consequently, it is considered that a shorter period for the stage 2 consultation with a completion date of 30 October would not adversely affect the final outcome of the review. Moreover, the shortening of the consultation period would allow more time for the implementation of any change to the Councillor numbers in time for the May 2023 Central Bedfordshire Council and Parish elections.
After this eight-week consultation period, a report of the feedback will then be compiled and presented to our General Purposes Committee again and a final decision about changes will be made by the General Purposes Committee on 15 December 2022. It will be implemented in time for the next elections for town and parish councils in May 2023.
All consultation responses were logged. Responses received from parish councils/residents’ groups will be highlighted as such and will be assumed to be an official response on behalf of the whole parish council/residents’ group.