Transparency in Local Government

Being a relatively new councillor, I was surprised and dismayed when I saw the low election turnout. I could not understand why so few people bothered to vote. In 2011 against the trend, all three Lib Dem candidates were elected or re-elected to North Kesteven District Council. In the back of my mind, the nagging feeling remained. What makes people we are elected to represent stay away from voting? Don't they care about who gets in? What could we, what should we do to get the average person to take the effort once every four years (local government) to go and vote? Bit by bit I realised, the fault was not with the people but us, at least some of us. We lost the trust of the electorate. I believe the reason is the lack of TRANSPARENCY.

If you want to find out how your MP has voted on any issue, you can go online and look it up. On the other hand, your councillor's vote is seldom revealed.
There need to be a number of councillors to force a recorded vote and the number varies widely from council to council.

I have made three New Year's Eve resolutions in 2013 and I will keep them.

• First was the New Year resolution that as I cannot force the District Council meetings to have all votes recorded (it needs at least six members), I will request that all my Council meeting votes be recorded. This can be found on the North Kesteven District Council's web site, in the Council meeting minutes.
• The second was to set up an E-Petition to ask the government to work towards all District and County council votes, to be electronically recorded every time. It is available to sign at; http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/44209. It needs a lot of signatures to get the government to consider it so please tweet it, share it, sign it, as the advert says "it's worth it".
• The last, was to go paperless thereby saving paper, ink and postage.

With lots of help from every one at NKDC, we are getting there.

Cllr John Bishop,

@CllrJohnBishop, http://johnbishop.mycouncillor.org.uk

Julia Wooley - Amber Valley comments

The main problem, in my view, after 10 years as a Town /Parish Councillor, is that those who have the majority of power, ignore their public until it is time for Election.

People give up trying to connect because no one takes any notice.