Fed up as I am with the daily stories of bankruptcy and job losses, I thought I might take the opportunity to explain a little about how local democracy works in Leeds. For those in the know, I apologise if I’m giving pointers on egg sucking, but I do often find there’s confusion so I thought this might be a welcome distraction. Especially if your telly has just been repossessed.
Leeds City Council is the local government of the City of Leeds metropolitan district which had 761,000 residents at the last census. It is made up of 33 ‘wards’, each of around 23,000 people of whom roughly 17,000 are of voting age. Each ward in Leeds has three Councillors who, after winning a seat on the Council in a local election, are in place for a term of 4 years. The reason only one seat at a time is usually contested is because it’s staggered. For this ward of Roundhay, Cllr Paul Wadsworth was re-elected in 2006, Cllr Valerie Kendall in 2007 and I was re-elected in 2008. There are therefore no local elections in 2009 and Paul will, I hope, want to put himself forward as the Conservative candidate for the 2010 local election. Local elections are usually held on the first Thursday in May.
In order to stand as a candidate in the local elections, you would need ten residents to nominate you who must all be registered voters in your ward. Unlike General Elections, there is no ‘deposit’ to lose if you don’t get many votes. You must also be 18 or older and either live or work in Leeds.
The size and shape each of the wards in the city are specified by the Boundary Commission for England based on proposals from the political parties and local psephologists (experts on elections). Every twenty years or so the boundaries can change to take into account changes in the area. For example, if a lot of house building had taken place in one ward, there may be a reduction in its size to keep numbers of electors down to an average. The Boundary Commission tries to remain independent and avoid too much political interference.
Where a ruling administration on a council campaigns to change boundaries for their own benefit to stay in power, it is often referred to as ’Gerrymandering’. This term originated in the early 19th century after Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry changed the shape of his county until it almost resembled a salamander in order to stay in power.
All the ward boundaries changed in 2004 in Leeds. In Roundhay Ward, Shadwell village moved into the newly created Harewood Ward and Roundhay gained the Brackenwood estate from Moortown. When the boundaries change, the city has an ‘all-out’ election where even Councillors with time to run in their term must stand again.
In Leeds no one party has more than half of the 99 seats required to completely control the Council. For this reason political parties will often join together to form either an alliance or coalition. In 2004 an alliance of Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Greens took over from Labour who had run the city since 1980. Five years on it is now a Conservative-Liberal Democrat alliance. In Leeds we consider the term ‘coalition’ to be similar to ‘alliance’, but under a coalition Councillors of controlling parties are more likely to work under one leader. In Leeds the two parties take turns every six months in holding the leadership of the Council. There can also be a minority administration when parties can’t agree to work together and so the largest party tries to run the council with no majority – this is not easy as almost any policy could be out-voted at a full meeting of the council.
A common question about local Government is whether we should have Proportional Representation (PR). Certainly in Leeds, this could have a major effect on the allocation of seats to parties. The results of the last election in 2008 are below. Under a PR system 1% of the vote could equate to roughly one seat on the Council if we retained 99 seats. The biggest changes of moving to such a system could be the British National Party gaining around 10 seats, Conservatives gaining around 10 seats and Labour losing 14 seats.
Proportion of votes across the city
Number of seats on the Council out of a total of 99
Conservatives
32%
22 seats
Labour
29%
43 seats
Liberals
19%
24 seats
BNP
11%
1 seat
Green
4%
3 seats
Independents and other parties
6%
6 seats
The reason for the mismatch of votes to seats won is twofold. Firstly the turnout in each ward is very mixed. For example, I was elected with 3337 votes in Roundhay and there was a 41% turnout of residents voting, the winner in Headingley did so with just 1021 votes, possible because only 18% of registered electors turned out to vote.
The second factor is that if a large number of all the voters from one party end up shoehorned into a small number of wards because of the areas covered by those wards, that party will win a small number of seats with a huge majority. Wetherby and Harewood wards are good examples of these the latter of which has a Councillor with a majority of over 4000 votes.
PR is ultimately a principle rather than a method of running elections. There are various types with strengths and weaknesses, but ultimately most make it hard for an elector to cast a vote for their favourite candidate. Most politicians rely on building their ‘personal vote’. This comes from helping people and in return hoping that the elector will put aside any feelings about party-politics and vote for that politician who has proven themselves as being effective.
I apologise if this has been a bit of a dry read, but I hope it has been of some interest. If there is any desire for it, in the future I am happy to cover some of the workings of the Councils boards and structure or any other topic which people are interested in. Do let me know.
“Hello, police? Come quick. My wife says she’s leaving me”
Last Friday I donned a stab vest and went out for a night shift with the police Response Team who deal with 999 calls. Let’s just say that after nine hours in and around Chapeltown, Harehills and Gipton, my eyes had been opened. The evening started off with us attending the scene of two burglaries, one attempted and one ‘successful’. The residents were understandably upset and the officers were very good at providing advice and reassurance. They even leafleted the immediate neighbours in case they’d seen anything unusual.
Next up was a lady who rang 999 to say her husband was attacking her and smashing up the house. We rushed over with the lights flashing and siren blaring only to find no smashed up house, no husband and seemingly no problem. The lady in question told us that it was actually her son and his girlfriend who had been fighting and that she feared her son might smash up the house, but that he had asked his mum to call 999 to say he’d smash up the house if the police didn’t come over. Make sense? Nope, I couldn’t understand this either. However, the lady was scared that her son and his girlfriend, who was a registered drug user, would return to her home. Despite the officers telling her to lock her door and leave them out, we were not convinced she’d do this. In reality she wanted the police to find this couple and sort out their differences for them. She was told this was not what the police are here for. The officers knew they’d end up being involved again. Sure enough, 10 minutes later we were on a mad rush round trying to find the source of reported public disturbances caused by the couple fighting in the street. After a fruitless search, all went quiet.
I think the most interesting case then came up with a man who had rung to say his wife had locked herself in the children’s bedroom, was self-harming and this kids were in danger. Again, travelling as fast as we could, we ended up at the house. The officers were quick to spot the problems. The discussion went something like this:
“You say she locked herself in the bedroom?”
“Er, yes, er, I don’t speak much English, I’m from Eritrea”
“How would she do that when there is no lock on the door?”
“Listen, she tell me she’ll leave me. You stop her leaving me and taking my children”
At this point the woman in question started saying she wanted to leave and despite knowing next to no English, said how the house and all the benefits are in her husband’s name and that she wanted her share. She also said her husband went away on work. When he was asked what he did for a living he became ‘confused’ but after a bit of pushing he admitted to working as a translator, so the lack of understanding appeared to be an act. His nervousness, I suspect, was that he may not have been allowed to work if, as I suspect was the case, he and his family were asylum seekers.
The next traumatic step was that the distressed mother started getting her four children, all under five years old, up and dressed in their pyjamas and coats to leave the house. She had no money for a taxi, was unspecific about where she was taking them and would have ended up wandering around Gipton late at night looking for somewhere to go. Naturally, the police didn’t feel they could let this happen, so they explained they were not a taxi service, but on this occasion would take her and the kids to a friend’s house if she had a friend nearby. We set off in the van when she announced her friend wasn’t in Seacroft after all, but could we please take her to Manchester. Naturally the officers were less than happy and told her unless she came up with another option quickly, we were turning back to the house. We ended up dropping them at a friend’s house in Burmantofts.
This, I assumed was the end of an interesting demonstration of how the police have their time wasted by people expecting them to be marriage guidance counsellors, social workers, benefits advisors and maybe even a taxi service. I was wrong. An hour later an angry desk Sergeant from City and Holbeck Police Station rang to say the lady had presented herself to them, told them the we had picked her up and dumped her and her kids in Burmantofts and that she had come to collect on the council house the officers had “promised her”. I suspect the officers were pleased that evening to have an independent witness on board.
There’s not enough space here to cover the fights on the street, the crack dealer whose father said the police were victimising him and the pathetic sentences his son had received in the past for dealing Class A drugs. Nor the ‘dirty protest’ from the prisoner in the custody cell because he wanted his medication right away and not in an hour. If you don’t know what a dirty protest is, don’t ask, and you can read ‘medication’ as heroin substitute. I sadly didn’t get to meet a family I was told are all alcoholics and, as they are registered as having problems caused by their drinking, get Incapacity Benefit at £85 a week rather than Jobseeker’s Allowance at £60.
I came away from the evening having seen how these brave officers put themselves in danger every night for the benefit of us all. They have to work in legal straight-jackets but enjoy their jobs and clearly care about people, even the ones who don’t care about themselves. Their broad range of skills in dealing with different people and different situations was amazing to see and they deserve our highest praise. I’m going to ask to go back out with them again some time soon, as I fear I’ve only scratched the surface of seeing what they have to deal with. These officers are the people who are there when all the other agencies have given up, picking up the pieces and maintaining order for us. Thanks to all of you out there every day and night, working to keep us safe.
Promoted by Ted Stafford on behalf of Matthew Lobley for North East Leeds both at Enterprise House
249 Low Lane
Horsforth
Leeds
LS16 5NY
Tel: 0113 2945074
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