Minutes:
M Anderson shared a comprehensive presentation to the committee on the Electoral Review.
What is an electoral review?
M Anderson noted that every fifteen years the LGBCE (Local Government Boundary Commission England) will come to a council and recommend they carry out an electoral review. The last time Dacorum had this was in 2006 and thus they were due to conduct one. The review considers the electoral arrangements for the local authority, looking at the number of councillors, number of wards, boundaries between wards, names of each ward and the number of councillors elected to each ward.
What is the process?
Phase 1 is to look at councillor numbers. This would be based on a population forecast as at 2030, looking at five years beyond the end date of the review. Once councillor numbers have been agreed, they look at the warding arrangements across the borough. It is then taken through parliament when the order is laid, then finally moved onto the implementation phase.
Phase 1: councillor numbers
Councillor numbers are looked at based on a 2030 forecast. During the phase they are asked to make a case for a specific number of councillors they feel they should have. They can receive submissions from the council as one body or from individual councillors or political groups. They note every council is unique and that therefore there is no policy as to whether recommendation should be made for councillor numbers to change or not. They stress that any submission made must be based on evidence and have supporting documents with it. The submission deadline for this phase is the 11th of March 2024.
Considerations to include are looking at the governance arrangements of the council, how decisions are made across all the responsibilities, council scrutiny functions relating to decision making and responsibilities from outside organisations. They also look at the representation or role of councillors in the local community and how they engage with people, conduct casework and represent local partner organisations.
Phase 2: warding arrangements
The local community then has two opportunities to give their views which are then consulted on. The first consultation on the warding arrangements will run from the 7th of May 2024 to 15th of July 2024. They consider all the responses and consult on draft proposals from the 1st of October 2024 to the 9th of December 2024. They publish the final proposals on the 1st of April 2025. Dacorum don't look at any of the consultation responses and everything goes back to the commission. Submissions must be based on three statutory criteria, which are electoral equality, community identities and interests and looking at effective and convenient local government.
Implementation
The implementation will be at the next local elections in 2027.
Effective representations
For an effective submission they looking at rationale, not assertion. They also want to see people highlighting things they like and not just what they don't like, suggestion of alternatives, practical community examples and consideration of all statutory criteria. They cannot consider parliamentary boundaries, postcodes, house prices or insurance.
Things to consider
Considerations to include how DBC may want to submit proposals for councillor numbers, which must be done by the 11th of March. The same needed to be done for the warding arrangements too.
There were also considerations around mapping software licenses and how many they may need. Councillor Anderson asked if the software included parish boundaries, which M Anderson responded she still needed a response from the company. Councillor Hannell stated they had been told in the briefing that the parish council boundaries weren't moving. Councillor Anderson clarified he was suggesting having parish boundaries there as a reference. Councillor Taylor asked if the software looked at polling districts, which M Anderson clarified it did. He also asked if a ward has the same layout as a parish council, would it be a basis for keeping it where it was. M Anderson responded she would need to check that. She added Stevenage Council used the same software company and she was hoping to see how it works from them. There was agreement the county divisions wouldn't be helpful as they were fixed and irrelevant to the borough boundaries. Councillor Williams noted they could iron out the anomalies by moving boundaries in line with the county boundaries as a potential option. The main concern regarding the software was figuring out how to give access to the right people without costing a high amount in license fees. Accuracy also needed to be tested as sometimes things didn't show up quite right.
Councillor Williams stated he felt the justification for councillor numbers seemed a difficult process to come up with evidence. The Chair responded the key evidence was whether they had enough councillors to effectively deliver services they want. He proposed starting with a premise of 51 councillors, 2,200 per ward, starting from there and then working based on the 2030 projections.
M Anderson said they had a template council submission form. M Brookes added they would go through this and build up an evidence base by looking at existing government, scrutiny committees and other committees, getting a general feel for how many members they feel they need. They were building up a scrutiny review in the background and the evidence from that review would help. A survey was going to be circulated asking whether the committees are set out appropriately with enough members, the right level of work, etc. He also noted in a presentation they had talked about an average of 2,500 residents per member to work to.
Councillor Taylor asked if they had done comparisons with other district councils and that it could be useful to make those comparisons. M Brookes responded they hadn't and that it wasn't listed as one of the considerations they would look at. Councillor Williams felt they were around average in comparison to other counties and the number felt right. He added they would be better with an odd number of councillors to have clear outcomes. Councillor Anderson said he had concerns about increasing numbers of residents per member and suggested it could have a negative impact on community identities.
M Anderson added the Electoral Services Team had completed the past three year’s electorate by polling district and the spreadsheet was now with the Planning department to consider the projected figures for 2030. Once all the information was on there, it should give a good starting point for considerations.
Councillor Tindall didn't like the idea of going below 51 councillors. There was agreement that if numbers started to be reduced then the geographical size of Dacorum had to be considered too. The general consensus was that 51 was a good number as a guide. There was discussion around whether making comparisons would be helpful, to which The Chair added it depended a lot on geographic consequences. He added that the boundary commission had said they also look at how the neighbourhoods fit together. Councillor Anderson added there was dilemma between top down planning and bottom up planning and meeting in the right place. He agreed that it had to be an odd number but needed more justification for 51 specifically. There was debate over how to accurately compare councillor numbers with smaller district councils with less people overall and there was correlation with geographic size of districts.
M Anderson said they needed to consider how often the committee would like to meet on this matter. She also noted that this wasn't a DBC review and although it is a review that affects them it is not run by them and they cannot change timetables and deadlines. She also pointed out the members briefing pack was a useful piece of information to look at.
Next steps
M Anderson outlined the next steps. Officers to provide the population forecast for 2030 by mid-November 2023. The outcome of the scrutiny review was aimed to be provided by January 2024. By the end of the year they also aimed to complete the submission template to set out the status quo and highlight areas for the committee to comment on.
The next step for the committee was to have discussions within their groups, looking at the three criteria and thinking about how to respond to the consultation. If members were to do things by email and meet in January, to go with a full council response, they would need to go to full council on the 28th of February. She suggested they could work via email then meet as a committee in January to look at the template for submission, incorporating comments, group discussions and feedback before formulating a response. They would then liaise via email. Otherwise they could go back to another meeting to agree. If it was a full council response it would be taken to the 28th of February council meeting, but if by January they were looking at responding as political parties, it wouldn't need to be taken to full council.
Following a brief discussion the general consensus was that it would be better to do a full council response.
A January date for a next meeting was to be pencilled in and work would be via email until then unless otherwise necessary due to a particular problem potentially needing to be discussed.