Boundary review

The vast majority of wards within Worcestershire have either two or three councillors. When a ward has only one councillor, who is found to be inept, difficult to contact or frequently away, is it fair on their electors to wait for up to four years to get the chance to elect someone else?

Our ward once had a councillor who was banned from any council activities for several months, yet we at least had our other councillor to represent us.

The town area of Bromsgrove contains one third of the district’s population within its present wards and also has the most proposed development in the district – the largest being along the Perryfields Road which has a capacity for 1,450 new dwellings.

This is split 50 per cent between the wards of Sidemoor and Whitford, which have a combined electorate of 7,765, so a single councillor in a rapidly expanding ward could soon be overwhelmed dealing with newcomers problems. Sharing the workload in larger wards seems a better solution to me which would more likely maintain a similar councillor to electorate ratio throughout the district – which previous Boundary Review changes had to bring back differences in ward numbers thatbeganat lessthanfive per cent of the electorate and has grown to over 20 per cent. The scope the creation of larger wards gives would also allow communitiesandtheir local facilities to be better matched up and larger communities within a ward would more likely muster more people to give greater voice to any major concerns, such as any unsuitable large scale developments being proposed by powerful developers.

Being well organised gets results – whichiswhythe major political parties stay in control. Send an e-mail to reviews@lgbce.org.uk or write to the Boundary Commission with your views before the deadline on August 28, while you can make a difference.

M Guest, The Flats, Bromsgrove