Penrith Town Council held an extra ordinary meeting on Monday evening to discuss plans published by the local government boundary commission that set out changes to the number of councillors the report listed should be 14.
The town council had been due to discuss the subject at its meeting held on Monday the 24th March but the item was pulled due to the plans including the scrapping of the Penrith East Ward.
Due to the by election taking place on the 27th March the item was pulled from the meeting at the last-minute resulting in the extra ordinary meeting taking place understood to cost the town council £500 to hold.
The town council responded to plans that said the town council should have 14 councillors saying:
“Penrith Town Council believes that there has been a lot of change over recent years with the introduction of the new unitary authority. The current work and further change may lead to confusion and disengagement within the electorate.”
“The change diminishes the link between residents and councillors. Residents rightly consider their respective patches of Penrith to be distinct and want councillors dedicated to their more localised communities, with the relevant knowledge of those areas.”
“Campaigning costs and workload becomes more onerous. Some councillors have access to party resources to fund leaflets and provide help to talk to several thousand residents but for independent candidates this adds more difficulty.”
The town councillors voted to support a response saying “ The number of Councillors should remain as 15 as the number of Councillors for this parish have previously undergone a CGR in 2019 reducing the number of Councillors from 19 to 15. The recommendation to lower the number of Councillors from 15 to 14 is therefore not accepted.”
The council claims the recommendation reduces the potential talent pool of the Council and that they are fortunate to have a wide range of in-depth expertise that would be wrong to diminish.
Penrith.Town news spoke with the Local Government Boundary Commission about the plans and asked the commission if the listing of 14 town councillors in its report plans was an error.
A spokesperson for the commission confirmed that the listing of 14 councillors was listed in error in the LGBCE report on draft recommendations.
The spokesperson added “LGBCE does not routinely alter the number of parish / town councillors as part of an electoral review of principal councils - we take the view that changes of this nature are best made through the Community Governance Review procedure.”
“I'd like to apologise for the unfortunate error, and the confusion this may have caused. The correct situation will be reflected in our Final Recommendations Report, due to be published later this year.”
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