Agenda item

A report by the Director Legal and Democratic is attached.

In response to notification from the Local Government Boundary Commission for England of the intention to undertake an electoral review of Wiltshire Council, the Electoral Review Committee was established to progress the review on behalf of the Council, and to formulate recommendations for any submissions to be made to the Commission.

A report was received from Ian Gibbons, Director of Legal and Democratic Services, outlining the reason for the electoral review and the process to be followed. The preliminary stage of the review would run until March 2018 and would determine the overall size of Wiltshire Council, and the second stage would then consider the boundaries of the number of divisions decided upon. The report also outlined the main areas that would be considered by the Commission in making their judgement on council size, being the governance arrangements of the council, its scrutiny functions, and the representation role of councillors.

The Committee discussed the data that would need to be collected and assessed for the review in order to make a recommendation on council size, including forecasts on electorate numbers and details on the council’s present and planned governance arrangements. In respect of details on the representational role of councillors, it was agreed to circulate a series of questions from the Commission’s guidance on council size submissions on the subject to all councillors to canvass their views. This and other data would be considered at workshop meetings for the Committee on 20 December 2017 and 3 January 2018.

Details were also sought on the process undertaken during the last review, which took place in the run up to the creation of the unitary council in 2009.

Resolved:

1)    To note the actions taken to date as detailed in the report;

2)    To note the two distinct parts to the electoral review - council size (preliminary stage) running until March 2018 and consideration of division boundaries from May 2018 to March 2019;

3)    To agree the approach in developing the Council’s submission on council size including the collection and presentation of data, working with the Commission’s representatives and publicity as detailed in the report; and,

4)    To agree the timetable of activity for the Committee to direct the project as detailed in Minute 8;

5)    To circulate questions in relation to the representation role of councillors to all members of the council.