Scrap cabinet system and put councillors back in driving seat
When it comes to local elections voters get a choice over who they want to represent them on the council. People vote for candidates that promise to be able to do different things for them and change things for the better. Voters expect those councillors to be accountable to their decisions. However, the way our local democracy functions has major flaws.
Although Calderdale Council has 51 councillors only seven of those councillors have any real decision-making powers. These councillors make up the cabinet of the council. They are appointed to these roles by the leader of the council that gets elected every year at annual council.
Recently residents of Sheffield voted to ditch this undemocratic style of local government and return the old committee system. Under this system decisions are made in committees with councillors from all wards regardless of political allegiance can come together to make decisions for the betterment of the community.
Other local authorities then form ‘local area committees’ where councillors representing clusters of local wards come together to make decisions about things that impact their local area.
Even for the councillors sitting on the cabinet there is not so much power as there at first seems. This is largely because the government has cut the amount of money the authority gains as a grant (your local council tax bill does not nearly cover the cost of services). This means in order to get almost anything new done the local authority has to bid into centralised pots of funding created by ministers and civil servants down in Whitehall.
This is a somewhat complex situation to explain, often when doing so it sounds like you are just ‘making excuses’ for why something hasn’t been done. But if we are to change things, and power is in the hands of Borough’s like Calderdale we need to understand where the funding and system in local government are failing. So here is our solution. Give local authorities grants to allow them to make their own local decisions. Scrap the cabinet system and return to the committee system, setup areas committees so elected representatives can make a difference. These three simple steps might help to feel their vote makes a difference.