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Have
you ever wondered what your local councillor actually does?
Do they spend their days at the town hall in Hendon?
Why do they always seem to be at meetings?
What powers do they have?
First a bit of background; there are 63 Councillor in the London Borough of Barnet. The Borough is split up into wards and there are three councillors per ward. In Barnet (the town not the Borough) we have High Barnet, Underhill and then East Barnet and Oakleigh.
Councillors are elected at the local elections for a four year term. As long as they behave themselves, attend at least one meeting every six months and don’t resign they are there for the whole four years regardless of what they do or don’t do.
Councillors are paid approximately £10,000 a year plus additional allowances for further responsibilities such a chairing a committee. They can also receive expenses for IT equipment, stationary etc.
Being a Councillor is usually not their main job. Most Councillors work in other jobs and attend meetings and do the bulk of their council work outside of normal working hours.
The Council runs on a cabinet system. Ten Councillors from the ruling group (which in Barnet is the Conservatives) sit in the cabinet and they and the leader of the Council make the decisions. The rest of the Councillors sit on various committees who’s main role is to scrutinise the work of the Council and help develop policy. In practice these committees can be quite toothless as the cabinet has the power to do what it wants. The committees are chosen according to political balance rules that reflect the political balance of the Council. This means that the ruling groups will have a majority on every committee.
There are also other types of meeting such as the planning committee which decides on planning applications. The members of the committee don’t need any particular qualifications or skills other than that you voted for them to be there.
Every month there is a meeting of the full Council where members and political groups can put forward motions for debate. Most of these motions are decided by a vote. Normally the political group with the most Councillors wins the vote. Occasionally a motion has cross party support. Motions passed at the full council will normally be developed either in to policies that the Council implements or will be passed to the fulltime officers of the Council for action.
Councillors can also ask questions at the monthly council meeting and will receive a reply from the relevant member of the cabinet both verbally at the meeting and in writing. These questions can be useful for uncovering items that would not otherwise be aired in public.
Virtually all Council meetings are open to the public and most of them are never attended by the public.
Councillors
usually hold surgeries to allow their residents to speak to them and
get help with issues relating to the Council. Increasingly email and
the telephone are the main means of communication. Councillors usually
deal with issues raised by residents by talking to the relevant Council
department and asking them to investigate any problems.
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