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Why do we get the wrong politicians? What do Councillors actually do for their £11,693 a year up to £43,763 a year allowance? Are the 45 Councillors worth £904,552 a year in total?

9/12/2021

This weekend Labour Party members are picking Councillor candidates for next Mays local elections for the island wards. So this post is really aimed at them and Liberal Democrats who I think are also in the middle of selections.

Last weekend the Labour Party selections took place for Limehouse ward and as a result Cllr James King was not selected and Mile End Cllr Asma Islam was also not selected (David Edgar & Puru Miah had already decided to stand down)

The removal of James and Asma as candidates was a surprise.

The Conservatives and Aspire parties have already picked most of their candidates

Fergus Collie is also looking for running mates I believe :)

In Tower Hamlets where the Labour Party is the biggest party and therefore thanks to First Past the Post most likely to win the most Councillor positions (42 out of 45 in May 2018 with less than 50% of the vote!) internal selections are often the most important elections.

Why do we have Councillors at all?

In May the majority of voters chose to keep the Executive Mayor system where all of the power and responsibility lies with one person, currently Mayor John Biggs.

So if the Mayor has all of the power, why do you need 45 Councillors?

You may be told you need to elect Labour Councillors to have a Labour Mayor, that would be a lie, two different jobs with two different election processes.

The main role for all Councillors is:

To hold the Mayor to account, to scrutinise the actions of the administration, to ask questions, to act as a ‘critical friend’ to Council officers, to make sure that there is a rigorous challenge to Mayoral decisions if Councillors think they were wrong (although we cannot overturn them)
To sit on committees, a few of which have real decision-making responsibilities (planning, licensing, and pensions), but most have some kind of scrutiny role
To represent residents, to help, advice, to ask questions on their behalf of, see below

Too many Councillors cannot / won’t do all three aspects of this job, some do none. Some are lazy and some are worth every penny.

But you elected them, so you as residents have to take responsibility for this as well.

Around ten Councillors get co-opted by the Mayor as Deputy Mayors and Cabinet Members, and get paid extra as a result earning between £43,763 a year for a Deputy Mayor and £33,085 a year as a full Cabinet member. The Mayor can give them some of his power if he chooses to. Most work hard but there is nothing in the public domain that details the amount of work they do.

But for the rest their main role should be to scrutinise the Mayor.

A few Labour Councillors do this extremely well, most don’t. Most seem to think that to criticise the Council is to criticise the Labour Party.

I believe Boris Johnson has made a number of errors, one reason why he has done so is a lack of effective opposition, although I think Keir Starmer is turning that that around. But in a democracy a weak opposition is not good.

Given that there were only 3 opposition Councillors after May 2018, now 5 thanks to two by-elections, Labour Councillors need to do more of this job.

Will the people you select be able and willing to do this scrutiny role?

What do we Councillors do?

With the exception of a few Councillors, I do not know what most of them do (because they are so invisible not because I do not think they do the work). But as an example in the last 48 hours I have:

Spend time on social media answering questions
Posted about a new river bus pier in Blackwall in a variety of groups
Attended a Children and Education Scrutiny Sub-Committee meeting and asked questions Wednesday early evening (several Cllrs asked no questions)
Answered questions and provided a quote to a local journalist about housing issues
Done an online TV interview & prepared for a live TV interview with ITV London that was cancelled at short notice
Emailed a developer about an accident on Byng Street
Update a formal letter to the Housing Ombudsman after reading a variety of emails
Asked the Council when they will repair the cracked surface of the St Andrews Wharf sports area
Chaired a Zoom call for 62 people and then;
Started building a Google Sheets document to track issues in a development
Set up a Facebook private group for the same development
Agree a meeting in January with the new owner of the heliport at Vanguard in January
Emailed CRT about a hole in a pavement
Read a number of government regulations like this one https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2012/2031/schedule/6
Reviewed and updated a spreadsheet and searched companies house and other addresses to check the results of a recent referendum
Walked past a youth centre to see if it was open & who was inside
Taking multiple phone calls from a resident not in my ward who won’t listen to any advice I try to provide
Written this document

You need to elect / select people who can do this range of activities and more.

If you don’t that puts more pressure on the Councillors who are able to do all of the above, the larger the number of effective Councillors the better off you will be.

In a democracy fundamentally the quality of government ultimately rests with the people

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