HOW many Wiltshire councillors do we need?

I ask because the Local Government Boundary Commission is wondering whether our unitary authority (not the city/parish council) could do without so many.

Funnily enough, our elected representatives aren’t terribly happy about this. The Trowbridge Tories who engineered the dismantling of our district council are now upset at being forced to justify the size of their own empire.

What goes around, comes around. Karma, they call it.

However, given that we are lumbered with a body covering too large an area to truly reflect and respond to local opinion, I have to agree with Jane Scott (yikes!) that what we don’t need is fewer people to perform this essential function.

‘Backbench’ Wiltshire members spend on average 24 hours a week on council business. The higher-ups put in considerably more. Committee meetings happen during the working day.

No wonder working-class, working-age people are almost entirely precluded from standing for election.

The Commission’s asking whether planning committees need so many members.

Aren’t there enough bad decisions taken already, without concentrating more power in the hands of a few?

It’s also wondering whether the 18 area boards, which meet in the evenings, could be slimmed down.

Wiltshire says they couldn’t, and shouldn’t.

According to Baroness Scott, these boards are a vital consultative tool for forming policy. Having sat through numerous Salisbury board meetings, I’d say that’s a bit rich.

They’re not particularly well attended, except during times of crisis – nerve agent poisonings, or that rumpus over the Market Place refurbishment a few years back.

However, they do perform a role, hosting generalised discussions on worthy subjects such as plastic waste or activities for teenagers, updating people on local authority campaigns, surveys and services, and on what’s being done by our ‘blue light’ brigade, voting on minor road improvements and allocating small community grants.

Wiltshire’s view is that “without them, large parts of the county would not feel they had a stake in the operations of Wiltshire Council”.

It’s sad but true that these meetings - plus the chance to watch the council’s deliberations on a webcast - are all we’ve got.

What a pity, though, that the area boards in the south of the county don’t have a forum to work together on cross-boundary issues such as transport, planning for development, and green infrastructure, with the result that there is no coherent leadership or spokesmanship for our wider local community.

Can’t they get their act together?

There’s another point I’d like to make here.

With all Britain’s problems - Brexit chaos, jobs moving overseas, the crisis in our schools, hospitals, care system - why are public servants being paid taxpayers’ money to spend hours nitpicking over whether we have 99 councillors, 98, 87, 82, 79, or whatever the latest number is that’s being bandied about?

What’s the administrative cost of this exercise compared with the attendance allowances of a few axed councillors?

anneriddle36@gmail.com