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May 2025 Local Elections - Was Undecided Now Decided (16th Dec 2024 - 20:32:35) Under the Govt's White Paper released today, 21 councils may have local elections suspended - originally scheduled for May 2025. This 'could' mean Labour will delay our local elections planned for next year - possibly until 2026 or 2027. If true, this doesn't feel very democratic?

Re: May 2025 Local Elections - Steve miller (16th Dec 2024 - 21:24:48) bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c30n72j4nrqo As explained here it seems a reasonable idea. Not a lot of spending money on electing councils that will shortly be abolished!

Re: May 2025 Local Elections - Joe (16th Dec 2024 - 21:45:59) I think this is because the Labour Government wants to abolish most district councils in favour of all the work done by district councils being done in future by the county councils and Mayors, which therefore means abolishing this a level of local government will no longer present a need to have any district councillors. If it saves a lot of taxpayers money and possibly a reduction in council tax then it is a good idea if done properly.

Re: May 2025 Local Elections - Susie (17th Dec 2024 - 04:22:27) Joe There will never be a reduction in council tax whatever changes they might make to local governments. All those pensions and salaries have to be paid for still. Staff will be relocated it's all been done before, move offices, build more hubs etc etc get rid of one tier and create another. Good old labour, but they won't tax the working man! And I believe in Father Christmas ho ho ho.

Re: May 2025 Local Elections - Joe (17th Dec 2024 - 08:54:19) Suse I do not believe that the idea of removing a large layer of local government is akin to a normal merger? The staff who work in all the many local district councils in Hampshire are a) not all just be doing the same work if they moved to work for the county council in Winchester ? And not all staff from all over Hampshire are going to be able to travel there. I am not sure precisely, but for the whole of Hampshire there are at least 100 or more district councillors who are not staff as such, although they are paid allowances and the leader of the district council does get substantially more in remunerations. They will save on the cost of all the elections for a start. Who knows about town and Parish councils yet ?

Re: May 2025 Local Elections - Joe (17th Dec 2024 - 09:05:18) I have just looked it up and EHDC alone has 43 elected district councillors, so this will affect many different areas of district councils, eg Basingstoke and Dean, Havant, Fleet, Fareham, Gosport , New Forest, Isle of Wight. Southampton, and Portsmouth are unitary authorities and the structure of these may change too. We obviously do not know all the details yet but surely cost saving will be achieved hopefully!

Re: May 2025 Local Elections - Was Undecided Now Decided (17th Dec 2024 - 10:00:44) Several political commentators - who may be more cynical - are pointing out that stopping local elections prevents Labour losing ground to Reform UK. Local elections are typically seen as a vote of confidence by the public in the Govt, so removing that democratic right for the electorate prevents any local change in political direction. That could be by design. Separately - does Hampshire need a Mayor?

Re: May 2025 Local Elections - Joe (17th Dec 2024 - 13:19:40) There are local Mayors anyway? There is one in Bordon and one in Alton and Haslemere - most town councils already have them ? No need for an extra one for Hampshire - there already is a Lord Lieutenant for each county,

Re: May 2025 Local Elections - Simon (17th Dec 2024 - 15:29:16) Most councils are broke, so a time-and-money hungry administrative exercise doesn't sound like best way forward.

Re: May 2025 Local Elections - C (17th Dec 2024 - 15:54:20) Lord Lieutenant is a non-political ceremonial role only, they don’t set or deliver policies.

Re: May 2025 Local Elections - John Jonson (18th Dec 2024 - 08:07:11) So those who are in favour of cancelling local elections claim that this will save public money: The money situation is so bad, going by your logic: Henceforth, all elections should be cancelled. It's crystal clear. Labour got voted in purely because the Torries have become unelectable, not because people wanted Labour. Now, having been grudgingly voted in, Labour is cancelling democracy so that they can stay in. No shame.

Re: May 2025 Local Elections - Joe (18th Dec 2024 - 09:47:30) No the logic does not follow to cancel all elections - but local government has two different layers and it would simplify things to only have one layer of administrators dealing with our council taxes. If they merged the 2 layers it hopefully would cut costs.

Re: May 2025 Local Elections - John Jonson (18th Dec 2024 - 10:25:39) Simplify the system when / where suits? Also simplifying would be saying NO all non-essential wasteful expenses, across the board, equally applied without exceptions, until funds might be replenished. NO to: Greedy wasteful workshy public sector, Greedy influential unions, Inefficient wasteful over-funded NHS, Vanity global environmentalism projects, Erroneous national environmentalist subsidies, Grandstand foreign aide, DEI total nonsense, Cushy immigrant pull factors, Public subsidised for new private houses, The list goes on... Governments make choices, for the good and for the bad. Labour's record is firmly with the latter.

Re: May 2025 Local Elections - Aggree (18th Dec 2024 - 11:16:25) Yes John the list goes on must be the worst government ever bring back Boris at least he would keep us out of the dreaded EU . How can a government pay the well off more and take away from the least well off crazy. They will soon be paying the illegal migrants to come here. Total disaster government.

Re: May 2025 Local Elections - Joe (18th Dec 2024 - 12:29:26) No the logic does not follow to cancel all elections in the UK but local government has 3 different layers and it would simplify things to only have one or 2 layers of administrators dealing with our council taxes. If they merged the 2 layers it hopefully would cut costs.

Re: May 2025 Local Elections - AF (18th Dec 2024 - 12:52:03) Oh dear Comrade Starmer keeps upsetting more and more people and messing up everything. At least Liz Truss had the common decency to resign when it all went wrong. Come Comrade do the Right thing - RESIGN.

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