No great rush for new council seats
Apr 14 2008 by Brian Daniel, The Journal
ANEW council being established as part of the shake-up of local government in Northumberland will not require elections in more than half its wards due to a lack of candidates.
Berwick Town Council is being created to provide grass roots participation in the new unitary authority for the county which comes into being next April.
The town council will operate as of next month during the transition to the new structure but should have even more powers once Berwick Borough Council is scrapped to make way for the unitary authority. Then, the titles of Mayor and Sheriff of Berwick will transfer to the town council.
Membership of the new council was due to have been elected on May 1.
However, only 21 candidates have been nominated for its 16 seats.
Half of the councillors will be elected unopposed and there will only be elections in three of the seven wards, while one ward will even have a vacancy as there are fewer candidates than there are seats. The new council is being prepared by the borough council’s Berwick town committee and its chairman Jennifer Waterhouse admitted to being disappointed by the shortage of candidates last night.
She said: “We were hoping that a lot of young people would maybe come forward because of all the publicity that we gave it.
“Unfortunately, it did not really happen. We are kind of stuck a bit.”
Berwick councillor Jim Smith said he was not surprised by the shortage of nominations given the perception that the town council would have only limited powers and financial clout.
He hoped the creation of Belonging Communities forums as part of the new structure would in fact give more power to the grass roots body.
He said: “I am not really surprised there were fewer nominations than there were for the unitary.
“With a parish council, people feel there is a smaller precept and their powers are limited, what they can do is limited. Hopefully with the Belonging Communities this will improve.
“If they deliver things down to the parish council and the Belonging Communities, this was the whole idea of the unitary, hopefully the parish councils and town councils will have a bigger say in what is going on.”
The borough council’s town committee has put aside £21,000 from its 2007/8 budget to allow the council to get up and running after the election.
