Local Authority Voting Systems

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:00 pm on 23 June 2021.

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Photo of Rebecca Evans Rebecca Evans Labour 2:00, 23 June 2021

So, of course the 2021 Act is following the same principle as the Wales 2017 Act did when it gave the Senedd the right to choose its voting system, so it is following that established process which would be applied to us here. But I did have an excellent meeting with the Electoral Reform Society earlier on this week, and they told me about work that they'd done with councillors to understand the appetite for STV amongst councillors here in Wales, and one of the things they reflected on quite significantly was the fact that quite a significant number of councillors didn't know and they didn't feel that they knew enough about STV and knew enough about the implications, how it might work and so forth, to make that decision, so I agreed that there was work that we could be doing jointly to provide information to councillors and to support that education work that the ERS wants to do to ensure that councillors are able to make at least an informed choice about the options available to them.