councillors

Openness of council finances is key for a functioning democracy

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Matty Edwards, Research For Action

Local authorities are under immense pressure to find savings whenever they can. After more than a decade of austerity, the collective deficit in the sector is expected to reach £9.3bn by next financial year. Local authority finances have also become increasingly speculative, as budgets are prepared on the basis of unpredictable grant allocations and single-year financial settlements, sometimes without audited accounts. Pressures to find new sources of income through commercial investments and private sector partnerships have also increased the complexity of council funding.

This creates a challenge: scrutiny of local government finance is more important than ever. Yet even with the best intentions, local authorities struggle to produce open and accessible financial information. 

In a research collaboration between Research for Action and the University of Sussex, we set out to explore how financial information — such as council budgets and accounts — could be made more accessible to the public. Our research found that even experienced researchers, accountants and councillors struggle to find and understand local authority financial information.

We spoke to 26 people from the local government sector over three months this spring to examine barriers to making local authority financial information accessible to councillors and the wider public. Interviewees included councillors from a range of authorities, council officers, academics, accountants, journalists and key sector bodies like CIPFA. 

Our key findings were a lack of standard reporting requirements, strained council capacity after years of austerity and a fragmented data landscape with no standard formats for publishing financial information. These barriers make it difficult to understand a single council’s finances and make comparisons across the sector, hindering effective scrutiny by councillors and journalists, and democratic participation by the public. 

Some interviewees argued that accessibility was less of a priority in the face of a mounting crisis in local authority finances, but in our view, openness is not a luxury. It is key to effective local democracy. 

How to improve open up council finances

Based on our findings, we set out a series of recommendations for greater transparency and openness. 

The government should introduce new data standards for local government to improve accessibility, potentially via a Local Government Finance Act. This should include making financial information machine readable where possible and using accessible file formats. An easy win in this area would be to create a single repository for all local government financial information.

Local audit reforms are also an important piece of the puzzle. The new Local Audit Office (LAO) should be made responsible for local government financial data, including making it publicly available with tools to enable comparison and oversight. A more ambitious idea for the new LAO could be to create a traffic light warning system for the financial health of local authorities based on indicators that are timely and easy to understand, taking inspiration from Japan. 

Council accounts were highlighted as a particularly technical and opaque part of local government finance. That’s why councils should be mandated to attach a narrative report to their annual accounts, as previously recommended by the Redmond Review.

We think that the Local Government Data Explorer, recently scrapped, should be replaced with a data visualisation that is genuinely accessible and interactive, perhaps taking inspiration from a dashboard created by academics in Ireland. There should also be funding for local open data platforms, because there have been isolated examples of successes, such as the Data Mill North. 

The other part of the problem is that councillors often don’t have the knowledge and skills to properly scrutinise the complicated world of local government finance. That’s why we’re calling for greater support and training for councillors to enable better financial scrutiny, as well as public resources to improve literacy around local government.

While the sector faces great upheaval in the next few years through local government reorganisation and English Devolution, these reforms also present an opportunity to improve transparency – whether that’s at unitary or combined authority level. 

We believe that greater openness will ultimately facilitate better public participation and healthier local democracies.

Matty Edwards is a freelance journalist based in Bristol who also works for Research For Action, a cooperative team of researchers that in recent years has investigated PFI, LOBO loans, the local audit crisis and scrutiny in local government.

Disappearing Reform UK Councillors, Lord Mark Pack’s Poll Base, and me, etc.

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Chris Game

Literally minutes before I was going to email this already over-lengthy blog, I had my attention drawn to Birmingham’s rather paltry 5.4 score and 4th-from-bottom ranking on the HAYPP vape retailers’ ‘smell score’ scale – pretty well what it sounds like: UK cities ranked on perceived cleanliness. It seemed so obviously distorted by the lengthy bin collection strike and consequently not a lot better than Leeds’ 4.2, rather than up with at least, say, Newcastle (7.4) or even Liverpool (8.2). But, apart from those few lines, I let it pass.

So, on to my initial topic, which, as it happens, kicks off with some equally basic stats. Someone asked me recently – albeit after I’d slightly steered the conversation – if I knew whether (m)any of the several hundred new Reform UK councillors elected in the recent local elections (that I’d written about in a recent INLOGOV blog) had already left the party.  

I had to waffle a bit – after all, the 677 ‘new’ ones had taken Nigel Farage’s party’s national total to just over 850, and some/many undoubtedly shocked themselves. But I did happen to know that the number of recent resignations/suspensions/expulsions was already into double figures. To which I was able gratuitously to add that the party had also ‘lost’, at least for the time being, two of its six MPs.

Which might seem to suggest either that I have a particular academic interest in Farage’s indisputably fascinating party or that I’m some kind of political nerd – to neither of which I’ll readily admit.

No, the explanation for my having acquired this arcane knowledge is that for at least 30 years now I’ve known/known of (nowadays Baron) Mark Pack, his captivation with all things electoral, and his enthusiasm for sharing that captivation – dating back to when he was at the University of Exeter, just up the A38 from the University of Plymouth, original home of ‘(Colin) Rallings & (Michael) Thrasher’ (definitely local government statistical junkies), and now itself home of their internationally renowned Local Government Chronicle Elections Centre, and its/their matchless annual Local Election Handbooks.

Naturally, R&T’s interests and path-breaking publications focus primarily on local government elections. Those of (nowadays) Lord Pack of Crouch Hill (but Mark hereafter) include the Liberal Democrat Party, of which he’s currently an extremely active President; the House of Lords, and, as ever, political opinion polls, about all of which he writes invariably fascinating weekly newsletters; in addition to reporting on almost anything electoral. This and more he shares on his exceedingly lively website, the recommendation of which (to any readers unfamiliar with it) is the main purpose of this blog.

And so, belatedly, back to those disappearing Reform UK councillors. It’s the sort of phenomenon that Mark Pack revels in – the numbers, the reasons/circumstances, it’s all perfect material for a near-daily political diarist.  He naturally keeps a running list of councillors “shed by Reform UK” since the May elections, the most recent updating of which at the time of typing this paragraph being, I think, on July 7th, when the departee figure had reached a quite striking 11.

They comprised five straight resignations as councillors, two expulsions by Reform, three suspensions by the party, one of whom subsequently quit, and one who’d decided they’d prefer to be an Independent.  

As for the (female) Reform UK councillor charged with assault and criminal damage, for instance – well, it was covered, naturally, in Mark Pack’s diary on June 30th, and she’ll shortly be “appearing before magistrates”.  And, as the Crown Prosecution Service publicly emphasised, it’s “extremely important that there be no reporting or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice ongoing proceedings.”    

Which brings us to the two of the all-time total of just six Reform MPs who already are no longer. First was Great Yarmouth MP Rupert Lowe, who back in March was suspended and reported to the police over alleged threats of physical violence towards the party’s Chairman, Zia Yusuf. And second, more recently, was James McMurdock, who “surrendered the party whip” a few weeks ago over, as The Guardian delicately put it, “questions of loans totaling tens of thousands of pounds.” 

The key, albeit belated, point of this blog, however, is the multifaceted contribution to our political world of Mark Park himself, rather than ‘here-today-gone-tomorrow’ MPs. Yes, he’s a copious diarist, but so much more. In particular, there’s his arguably greatest single contribution to our academic political world: the phenomenon that is what I still think of as his ‘PollBase’, but which comparatively recently has acquired the handle PollBasePro.

If you’re writing anything at all concerning our political world in the 90-plus years since 1938/39 – yes, before the start of World War II – and you need to know or even get a sense of the state of UK public opinion on a virtually month-by-month, and latterly week-by-week, basis, just Google either title, and it’s there, instantly accessible and downloadable. Yes, completely free – all Mark asks is that you point out any mistakes (!) and have the decency to acknowledge the source.

It’s a fabulous resource, easily worth – pretty obviously – a blog on its own, but all it’s going to get on this occasion is this abbreviated reference, kind of explaining why I’ve structured this blog in the way I have. That reference comes from p.2 of the dozens of pages, when the only pollster was Gallup and the only poll publisher the News Chronicle (1930-60, when it was “absorbed into the Daily Mail”).

From the start, in 1938, the sole question asked consistently was “Conservatives Good or Bad”, and, probably not surprisingly, throughout most of World War II, the Conservatives were overwhelmingly (75-90%) ‘Good’. Only from 1943 were questions asked about the other parties, and from the start Labour, polling consistently in the 40s, had a double-figure lead over the Conservatives, suggesting that voters were already clearly differentiating between the conduct of the war and the conduct of peace.

This came to a head in January 1946, when Labour, with 52.5%, outpolled the Conservatives by a massive 20.5%, a lead they’d never previously even approached and would do so just once again in the coming decades. Oh yes, and I was born at the very end of December 1945 – and, if only we’d known, my committed Tory-voting parents would have been deeply unhappy, and I’d have gurgled contentedly. Sorry about the length, but I had to squeeze that last bit in.

Chris Game is an INLOGOV Associate, and Visiting Professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, Osaka, Japan.  He is joint-author (with Professor David Wilson) of the successive editions of Local Government in the United Kingdom, and a regular columnist for The Birmingham Post.

Picture credit: https://www.facebook.com/nigelfarageofficial/posts/today-i-announced-29-local-councillors-have-joined-reform-uk-from-across-the-cou/1184319953049781/

Cyclopean ‘local’ government and the end of local democracy?

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Chris Game

As with another quite recent blog of mine, it’s important to start with the alert that most of its style, structure and content stem directly from its having been written in the first instance not for an academic readership, but as a column for probably this week’s Birmingham Post. There are a few additions and subtractions, plus, barring a dramatically uncharacteristic Lowtherian intervention, one guaranteeable difference: the title.

At the time of writing this intro I don’t know for certain what the Post editor’s choice of words and punctuation will be – except that it won’t comprise nine words, including three longish ones. Space and layout, you understand. It will, however – because regular authors do have at least some bargaining ‘say’ – open with that key word that many/most Post readers will barely recognise.

To summarise the whole thing: here in Britain we already have, and in England, following last December’s devolution White Paper, are about to develop still further, a scale of ‘local’ government that makes a complete mockery of the term ‘local’; and the present Government, with no noticeable public consultation, is embarked on increasing that non-local size still further – to truly Cyclopean dimensions.

And, as I sought to explain to the Post editor, by introducing this concept, rarely if ever used in modern political debate, both the Post and I will become – well, you never know – possibly a little bit famous. Here’s the reasoning.

First, ‘Cyclopean’, used in the context of local government.  Ancient Greek, pretty obviously, it originally described an architectural style in which the walls, towers and other fortifications of ancient cities like Mycenae (a 70-odd mile day trip SW of Athens) were constructed from massive limestone boulders – of the scale shown in the accompanying illustration – fitted extremely closely together without apparently having been substantially reshaped and without use of mortar or cement. 

So preternaturally impressive were these city constructions – the hilltop Mycenae was perhaps the most famous, but there were numerous others – that the myth developed that they must have been built by the Cyclopes, a race of superhuman giants in Greek mythology, and the only humans physically capable of creating such constructions. Hence ‘Cyclopean’ – to describe the assumed method and scale of a city’s governmental architecture, not the size of its residential population.

Somehow, though, towards the latter end of the 3,500 intervening years, the UK has developed, to an almost unique degree, its own interpretation of ‘Cyclopean local government’. Yes, there are loads of large buildings – Birmingham’s Council House and Central Library for starters, the Octagon, etc. – but there’s no Cyclopean mystery about what holds them together. Put crudely, it’s the concrete and steel, not some mystical manpower.

The UK’s, and particularly England’s, modern-day local government and its latest structural ‘reform’ have become almost entirely about scale. Instead of referring to the governance of, or provision of services for, a particular local community and its unique character, England’s ‘Cyclopean local government’ currently comprises just over 300 ‘local’ authorities, with populations averaging 180,000 – which is hardly our (or anyone’s) ‘everyday’ usage and understanding of that term ‘local’.

And yes, averaging. Which, of course, would make Birmingham’s 1.2 million population ‘super-Cyclopean’ – and the West Midlands Combined Authority’s 4 million ‘Mega-Cyclopean’. Or ‘hyper-Cyclopean’, which I personally slightly prefer, suggesting something beyond the bounds of reason, or control. We’ll return to that.

Some quick comparisons or contrasts: average size of German and Italian municipalities is around 7,500, Spain’s 5,700, and France, albeit as exceptional in its way as the UK, 1,900. Yes, slightly under one-hundredth the size of our average, and, by chance, roughly the same as our smallest, the Isles of Scilly, arguably our one ‘municipality’ that wouldn’t make a mockery of the term ‘autorité locale’.

The rest of the world, or first-time observers, find our scale figures as extraordinary as the Ancient Greeks found Mycenae. They are naturally curious as to how we do anything purporting to be genuinely ‘local’ government on such a manifestly non-local scale, and, above all, why.  Good questions, but not for a local newspaper column. Indeed, not for the likes of us mere citizens and voters either, because no one’s bothering to ask us.

The major redesign of England’s local government is currently in the hands of Angela Rayner – Deputy Prime Minister + (in any spare time) Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.  An early action was to cancel – arguably “legally risky”, if not unconstitutionally (see Google– ‘Cancellation of 2025 English local elections’) – nine May 2025 county and unitary council elections, she/someone in the Government having decided that these bodies had had their day and there would be no room for them in her new, but still undefined, single-tier England.

Rightly describing the UK as the “most centralised” country in Europe (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn0xz4938z9o), Rayner’s apparent plan is to end central government’s micro-management by making ours, by a distance, the least localised – most Cyclopean – ‘local government’ certainly in Europe, if not the world (500,000 minimum), and, it would appear, without a great deal of consultation.

The ’plan’, in summary, represents the biggest and most transformative upheaval of English local government in my adult lifetime (sorry, you’ll have to work it out!), rushed/bullied through Parliament and local government itself with absolutely minimal consultation and consequential analysis. In short, modern-day Cyclopean local government.

Chris Game is an INLOGOV Associate, and Visiting Professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, Osaka, Japan.  He is joint-author (with Professor David Wilson) of the successive editions of Local Government in the United Kingdom, and a regular columnist for The Birmingham Post.

Picture credit: https://stock.adobe.com/uk/images/odysseus-und-seine-gefahrten-fluchten-vor-dem-zyklopen-polyphem/608942497

Rewiring Local Government for Citizen Engagement

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Jason Lowther

The Institute of Local Government Studies (INLOGOV) has published a new report, Rewiring Local Government for Citizen Engagement, which sets out a compelling case for reimagining the relationship between local authorities and the communities they serve. At a time of structural reform, fiscal constraint and lower public trust, the report argues that citizen engagement must become fully embedded local governance, rather than a peripheral activity.

The report identifies three interrelated conditions that are essential for effective engagement. First, local authorities must convene inclusive democratic spaces that enable deliberation, dialogue and collective decision-making. These spaces, whether in the form of citizens’ assemblies, participatory budgeting or neighbourhood forums, can help to rebuild trust and foster more responsive policymaking.

Second, councils must invest in building community capacity. This involves supporting citizens, particularly those from groups whose views are often neglected, to participate meaningfully in public life. It also requires sustained investment in community infrastructure, such as local venues, networks and organisations, which provide the foundations for civic engagement.  The report recognises that 15 years of austerity since 2010 has significantly reduced the availability of community meeting places such as libraries, neighbourhood offices, youth and community centres, and cultural and leisure services.

Third, the report highlights the importance of co-producing public services. By involving service users in the design and delivery of services, councils can ensure that provision is more closely aligned with the lived experiences and priorities of local people. Co-production also fosters innovation and strengthens the legitimacy of public institutions.

The report draws on a wide body of academic research and practical experience, both in the UK and internationally. It shows that democratic innovations are already taking root in many councils, despite the challenges posed by austerity and institutional inertia. Examples include digital engagement platforms, youth-led initiatives, and the devolution of powers to neighbourhood and parish levels.

However, the report also acknowledges the barriers that councils need to address. Organisational cultures, limited resources, the need to develop new skills in officers and members, and legitimate concerns among elected members about the implications of participatory approaches can all inhibit progress. The report calls for leadership, reform and investment to embed engagement in the everyday practices of governance.

We pay particular attention on the vital role of councillors, who are well placed to act as facilitators and mediators between communities and institutions. Supporting councillors to develop these roles is essential if engagement is to be sustained and meaningful. The report also emphasises the need to engage young people and to make appropriate use of digital tools.

In conclusion, Rewiring Local Government for Citizen Engagement offers a clear and evidence-based framework for strengthening local democracy. It argues that by embedding citizen engagement in governance structures and practices, councils can foster trust, improve outcomes and build more inclusive and resilient communities.

We will be discussing our findings with councils, central government and related think tanks and sector organisations over coming months.

The full report is available here:

Rewiring local government for citizen engagement_WEBDownload

Win an election and implement your manifesto – that’s novel!

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Image: Emily Sinclair/BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c367lry5ypxo

Chris Game

First, a reader alert. What follows is in essence an only marginally revised column written for and hopefully published in this week’s Birmingham Post, to which for many years now I’ve been a regular contributor. Thanks, at least in part, to the “many years”, I’m permitted a wide scope of subject matter, but for obvious reasons local government in some form or other is what I tend to resort to most frequently – not least around local election season.

With the Post’s Thursday publication date, this is a mixed blessing, knowing that most readers interested in these matters would very likely have learned the results of the elections before they read one’s prognostications and predictions. What follows here, then, is my third column focused on this year’s local (County/Unitary Council) elections, which were, of course, limited to just 24 of England’s 317 local authorities (plus the Isles of Scilly) and precisely none in, never mind Birmingham, the whole metropolitan West Midlands.

Faced with the alternative option of ignoring the topic altogether, I decided to focus on the four West Midlands County Councils: three with biggish, if declining, Conservative majorities – Shropshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire – plus STAFFORDSHIRE: Labour for decades, but Conservative since 2009, and, until the May council elections, with 55 Conservative councillors out of 62, almost as Tory as they come.

However … since last July, when the county’s parliamentary constituencies all went Labour, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party had been energetically hoping to build in Staffordshire on what statistically had been among its most promising performances. And indeed it did: Reform UK: 49 of the 62 County Council seats, leaving the previously controlling Conservatives with 10, and Labour, Greens and Independents 1 each. The Lib Dems, along with UKIP, the Workers Party of Britain and others, failed to score.

It typified results across the country. On what nationally was an exceptionally quiet election day, Reform UK increased its nation-wide base of just two councillors (both on Hampshire’s Havant Borough Council), to a relatively massive 677 (39% of the total seats contested) and gained majority control of no fewer than 10 of the 23 councils.

One can only speculate at some of the results that a fuller involvement of, say, the 130 unitary authorities, metropolitan districts and London boroughs might have produced. I concluded that Election Day column, though, not with any numerical predictions, but with Farage’s most publicised campaign observation/pledge: “We probably need a DOGE for every single county council in England”.

Which could have sounded a touch presumptuous from the Leader of a party who had approached that Election Day holding just two of the 1,700+ seats ‘up for grabs’ – but not from Farage.

I did wonder, though, what onlookers would make of that DOGE acronym (or, in some versions, D.O.G.E. – that’s how novel it is). Indeed, even Reform candidates, who probably knew at least that it stood for the love child of President Trump and the recently very departed Elon Musk’s Department Of Government Efficiency, trod carefully.

Created, they could possibly parrot, to “modernise information technology, maximise productivity and efficiency, and cut wasteful spending”, but did they have any real idea of how the function and office might work in a UK political context? Or did they possibly assume that, like so many campaign pledges, even if, rather incredibly, a DOGE majority did emerge, it would find itself, at least for the present, on the ‘too hard just now …. we’ve only just elected our Leader’ pile?

Certainly I, while having at least some idea of what county councils having an English DOGE might entail, would definitely NOT have predicted that, within just one month of those county elections, one of England’s biggest and traditionally most Conservative counties, KENT, would be preparing to face an ‘Elon Musk-style’ DOGE audit by a team of technical experts assembled specifically to analyse its £2.5 billion-plus budget spending and assess its financial efficiency.

Since the past weekend, the ‘Elon Musk-style’ bit will possibly have been played down, but not, seemingly, the ongoing implementation. With LANCASHIRE – £1.2 billion budget – already announced as next on the list, this just could prove insightful and potentially serious stuff.

Until May 1st, Kent County Council comprised 62 Conservatives, 12 Lib Dems, 4 Greens, 0 Reform UK.  Since then, it’s been 10 Conservatives, 6 Lib Dems, 5 Greens, and 49 Reform UK. If dramatic change is to be the agenda, Kent seemed an apt and attention-guaranteeing choice. 

By any measure, and almost whatever happens next, that – in my book, anyway – is an impressive achievement. There’s been, predictably enough, ‘Establishment’ outrage – “a superficial response to the deep problems of local government” … “initiating a review of local authority spending misunderstands the circumstances facing local authorities … All councils have been caught in an iron triangle of falling funding, rising demand, and legal obligations to deliver services. In that context every local authority has had to make difficult choices to cut services …” (Institute for Government).

On the other hand, win an election and implement your party manifesto! – a demonstration that turning out and voting in local elections, even in our exceedingly non-proportional electoral system – can produce policy action.

Or, rather, especially in our exceedingly non-proportional electoral system. Two of the new Combined Authority mayors (outside the West Midlands) were elected on under 30% of the votes cast, and obviously a much smaller percentage still of the registered electorate.

This follows the recent ditching of the Supplementary Vote in favour of ‘First-Past-The-Post’, where voters pick just one candidate, and the one with the most votes wins – even if, as this time in the West of England, that percentage was under a quarter of an already very modest turnout.

To me, anyway, it’s arguably even more important in these local/Mayoral elections than in parliamentary ones – for us, the elected Mayors, and democracy generally – that voters can indicate their first AND SECOND Mayoral preferences, thereby ensuring that, however low the turnout, the finally elected winner can claim the support of at least a genuine majority of voters.  Which means electoral reform – but that’s another column/blog.

Chris Game is an INLOGOV Associate, and Visiting Professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, Osaka, Japan.  He is joint-author (with Professor David Wilson) of the successive editions of Local Government in the United Kingdom, and a regular columnist for The Birmingham Post.

Cotswold District Council elections – more interesting than you imagined?

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Chris Game

I’ve literally just finished watching the LGIU’s promotion of its new Future Local Lab – asking me personally, albeit rhetorically (“Chris, are you ready?”): “How are we going to survive climate?”, “Will there be enough houses?”, “What can we use Artificial Intelligence for?” and a dozen other similar teasers. If this is the kind of thing you’re into, please skip this blog entirely. It’s right at the other end of whatever scale the LGIU is operating on.

I was emailed over the weekend by an erstwhile colleague who, driving back to Birmingham through the Cotswolds, noticed that there is a local by-election this week for Cotswold District Council. Interesting, eh? No, if you’re still there, don’t go away just yet – there’s a bit more to it.

No, not control of the council. Historically Independent, then Conservative, Cotswold DC is nowadays comfortably Lib Dem: 20 Lib Dems, 9 Conservatives, 2 Greens, 2 Independents. So, even though it’s a Lib Dem member who’s resigning, the politics of the council won’t change. The real issue is: for how long will there be a Cotswold DC, or, for that matter, any of the other five Gloucestershire DCs – following Deputy PM Angela Rayner’s White Paper announcement that all England’s district councils will be abolished, with regional mayors and unitary councils to be introduced in all areas?

A council which in Gloucestershire’s case would currently be odds-on to be no longer, after two decades, Conservative, but, like Cotswold DC, Lib Dem. Or would it? The general assumption following the Government’s December White Paper seems to have been that in counties like Gloucestershire all six of the district councils would merge with the county council to produce, well, a pretty large and definitely non-local Gloucestershire Unitary Council.

To which prospect, as I assume is happening quite widely across England, there has been adverse reaction. Gloucestershire would be just in the top third largest counties (by population), and in its case five of the county’s MPs have recently written to the Minister of State for Local Government and English Devolution, Jim McMahon, proposing instead something on at least a slightly less ginormous scale. In this case, that two unitary councils be created – covering, in this instance, the Forest of Dean, Gloucester and Stroud in the West, and Cheltenham, Tewkesbury and the Cotswolds in the East. The area is simply too large to be covered by one council, they argue, although, probably unsurprisingly, the County Council would disagree.

Indeed, it has been looking at how Gloucestershire could enter into an even bigger Combined Authority with neighbouring counties: variously joining Herefordshire and Worcestershire to the north, becoming part of the West of England Authority around Bristol to the south, or joining with Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Reading and Swindon to the east. I’m guessing similar deliberations are happening across the country.

Whatever – it’s not exactly ‘local government’ as my emailing ex-colleague and I once knew it! Yes, back to him, and indeed the prompt for this blog. His main reason for emailing about this week’s Cotswold Council by-election was that he knew we would both recall what was almost certainly the last time one of those was in the news – the national news, that is.

It was in May 2023, when the Lib Dems strengthened their control of Cotswold DC, thanks in part to a Chris(topher) Twells taking the Tetbury with Upton ward from the Conservatives. Yes, the same Cllr Twells who was at the time and continued for a further year to be also a member of Salford City Council, 160 miles away, just west of Manchester.

As it came to be public knowledge, it was, of course, controversial – with initially, in some circles anyway, some uncertainty about its legality, not helped by the fact that apparently even the local leadership of his new party group had been unaware of the situation. All of which seemed barely credible, since even I could have told them about the legality bit, without even checking. Anyway, soon after his Cotswold election he was suspended by his own party, “to enable a complaint to be assessed”, which had prompted my weekend emailer to contact me. But I decided even I couldn’t pad it out into a blog – until now!
Double-Cllr Twells’ own self-justification was clear enough, but didn’t do him any great favours. Most obviously it was legal because “your qualifications to stand for election can be based on occupying property or work”. Correct. Working for himself gave him the “flexibility” to attend all necessary meetings of both councils. OK. The councillor sitting on two authorities 150 miles apart had no problem fulfilling all his duties because an elected member’s workload “is not enormously onerous”. Hmm – not guaranteed to make you many friends.

And the killer punch: “I don’t want to worry anyone, but I’m technically qualified to stand for up to five districts in England and Wales”. I don’t think he meant contemporaneously, but it’s a good way of remembering just what the law says.

Chris Game is an INLOGOV Associate, and Visiting Professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, Osaka, Japan.  He is joint-author (with Professor David Wilson) of the successive editions of Local Government in the United Kingdom, and a regular columnist for The Birmingham Post.