Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:11 pm on 15 March 2017.
Well, Llywydd, I absolutely agree that it is an obligation on any elected councillor to remain in a continuous relationship with those people who have elected them. What the White Paper does is to set up a menu of ways in which a local councillor can demonstrate that they have done that. They will have to demonstrate that they have done it. But if you are a local councillor, for example, who publishes four quarterly newsletters and delivers them around your ward, then I think you’ve gone beyond a single annual report in demonstrating that you are delivering on the obligation that the White Paper does create, that you as a councillor must be able to show that you are doing what we would, I think, collectively agree that you should do. So, there is a menu of choices that councillors will be able to use to show that they are doing it. An annual report is one, but there are other ways as well. Councillors will have to show what they have done from that list of things to remain in that continuously answerable relationship with their populations.