Our much maligned Local government is actually one of our most important layers of democratic representation, it delivers many frontline services such as social care and waste collection.
Yet, for many people local government is not that representative or responsive and that’s down to the fact that local government elections in Wales are held using the First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system which is unfair and unrepresentative.
This questionable winner takes all system leads to huge gaps between vote share and seat share. We end up with councils dominated by one monolithic party elected with less than a majority of the vote.
Another side effect is that this leads to the development of a stifling undemocratic ‘safe seats’ culture where parties hold certain areas with little to no competition.
Yet, in Scotland and Northern Ireland, local government elections are held using the Single Transferable Vote (STV), a fairer, more proportional system that doesn’t suffer from many of the problems of FPTP and has been found to deliver much fairer outcomes.
Today ((18th November) the Senedd will be voting on whether to pass the Local Government and Elections (Wales) Bill, an important and significant piece of legislation which aims to transform local democracy in Wales.
This opportunity to reform our local government electoral system to make it more democratic is to be welcomed.
That said in an entirely typical Labour in Wales fudge - the decision in relation to electoral reform - which is vital to rejuvenate local democracy - to local authorities themselves.
The introduction of Single Transferable Vote in multi member constituencies would change everything and eliminate safe seats for ever - which is a good thing.
Somehow I suspect that hell would freeze over before our Labour in Wales representatives voted to bring in representative democracy at the civic centre (in Newport) along with any other Labour in Wales controlled local councils.
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