Is the 'new' councillor system better?

Stoke-on-Trent City Council has been reshaped ahead of the May election in respect to wards and councillors, as many of you are already aware.

It means that the Stoke-on-Trent area will be served by 44 councillors, across 37 smaller wards.

The majority of wards will be represented by individual councillors, but a few will have two or three.

Of course, no-one can say for sure how the new system will work out because we simply don't know yet but some concerns have risen making it all the more important voters consider their candidate carefully.

The main concern appears to be - what happens in the event of a councillor (in an single-councillor ward) falling ill, or having to take a long-term break from their duties. In the worst case scenario, what happens if a lazy or incompetent councillor is elected?

In the old system, a councillor would always have a colleague in the ward to help out, so what will become of wards which aren't fully represented in whichever way?

It would be expensive to hold elections for a temporary councillor to cover someone off sick and arguably not democratic to appoint somebody not elected by the electorate...

Another issue is workloads - what if an elected councillor is also required to serve on other panels or in other roles (such as Lord Mayor). One ward may have a Councillor able to commit more or less of their time to different jobs or tasks.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council have adopted the change subject to the Local Government Boundary Commission for England recommendations.

Below are a few opinions shared with StokeElect on twitter earlier today.

"I think it's the fact that we've got them for four years that is more the issue. Get a lazy one and it will be hard work"

"does mean one councillor is going to have to be all things to all men in a lot of places..."

"all depends how active they are, 1 active councillor is far better than 3 pen pushers"

"would have preferred 100% single member (or even dual member) wards - think there are +ve & -ve for old & new system."

New Wards - Maps & Demographics

Follow this link here to have a nose at some demographic detail of your local ward.

City Council Ward Demographic Pages

The Stoke-on-Trent City Council website is hard to navigate a lot of the time (in my opinion) but there are some real gems to be found inside.

The link above takes you to a rather empty looking page but in fact the list on the right can take you on to view .pdf files containing the following based on data collected by the Council:

Household estimates
Population (incl. Male/Female) estimates
Age category population breakdown estimates
Household Income averages (incl. % with <£10k and >£50k)
Index of deprivation
Employment %s
Ethnicity
And socio-demographics (in other words what type of people live in which types of houses)

Fantastic for researching your local area and the sorts of people living in it.

Especially good for election candidates in understanding their areas more.

Welcome

Welcome to the blog extension of the @StokeElect2011 twitter account.

Here you'll find some extra bits and pieces from around the web as well as any material I create myself regarding the upcoming elections on May 5 2011.

Stoke-on-Trent citizens will be taking to the poll booths to vote not only on the national UK referendum about the adoption of Alternative Vote but also to elect an entire new array of councillors to the City Council.

To mix things up even more this May, ward boundaries and councillor numbers have changed resulting in a drop of total councillors but an increase in the number of wards. The result of this: smaller wards with independent councillors to represent.

There are exceptions - with 5 wards keeping the traditional two-councillor election and 1 ward having a three-councillor election.