Arlesey residents: have your say on reducing the number of your town councillors
Thursday, 8 September 2022
Residents in Arlesey are being asked for their thoughts on the number of town councillors in their parish.
This consultation was requested by Arlesey Town Council after it had difficulty attracting enough candidates to stand for election at the 2019 parish elections.
Find out more and have your say.
For a community governance review, there are two stages of consultation. We have completed the first stage, in which we asked for people’s views on a proposal to change the number of town councillors.
Some parishes, particularly smaller ones, find they have not been able to attract sufficient candidates to stand for election. This can lead to uncontested elections, where no vote is required because there is space for all the candidates.
Following analysis of consultation feedback from stage one, which indicated a preference to reduce the number of councillors, a report was considered by our General Purposes Committee, which is now recommending a reduction from twelve to seven Arlesey town councillors.
This second consultation stage asks people their thoughts on this recommendation. It opened on Monday, 5 September and will finish on 30 October 2022.
Councillor Dixon, our Executive Member for Sustainability and Transformation, said:
This is a chance for Arlesey residents to have their say on how their local community is represented as part of the democratic process so please do take the time to share your thoughts.
The General Purposes Committee also agreed to shorten the stage two consultation period from 12 weeks, to eight. The reason for this was laid out in the report for General Purposes Committee (PDF).
After this eight-week consultation period, a report of the feedback will then be compiled and presented to the 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.