Derbyshire Dales District Council plans to cut number of councillors

Derbyshire Dale District Council has approved early plans to reduce its size from 39 councillors to 34.

This a slight step back from initial plans to cut back to 33 councillors.

The move is largely motivated by the reduction in responsibilities the council has after outsourcing leisure centres and bin collections and selling off its housing stock.

This has left councillors with less to do, says Sandra Lamb, the authority’s director of corporate services.

She also pointed out in a report that the move would save the authority – which is not “cash rich” – thousands in councillor expenses.

Voters in Bakewell and Masson (the Matlock Bath area) are set to drop by a fifth.

Ms Lamb said some areas in the Dales, particularly in the Peak District National Park, have “stagnated”, with very little new development in recent years. Overall, the district has taken more than 20 years to achieve the growth others have seen in ten years or less.

She said the aim is to reduce voter inequality by splitting elected representatives up fairly.

Ms Lamb said: “Decision-making processes of the council have faced significant contraction in recent years. we are not a cash-rich authority and we are limited by the availability of our finances.

“We need to decide what the optimal number of councillors is that we need to run this authority.”

Coun Garry Purdy, leader of the authority, said: “We have lost about half the number of staff and there has been lots of development and lots of mergers. This authority is a shadow of its former self in size.”

He says the council must not get hung up on the numbers and says that under future local government reorganisation plans the district could be scrapped altogether.

Cllr Purdy said: “There are sweeping changes around the corner and getting hung up on figures is quite frankly, pointless.”

Central government plans to cut the 218 district and county councils by around two-thirds through mergers into unitary authorities in what would be the largest reorganisation of local government for 35 years.