An election has been called to fill a vacancy on Great Wakering Parish Council.
You can download the election notice from the council website here. (17kb)
As the notice says:
1. An Election is to be held for a Parish Councillor for Great Wakering West Parish.
2. Forms of nomination for the Parish Election may be obtained from the Council Offices, South Street, Rochford, Essex, SS4 1BW from the Returning Officer.
3. Nomination papers must be delivered to the Returning Officer, Council Offices, South Street, Rochford, Essex, SS4 1BW on any day after the date of this notice but no later than NOON on Friday, 19th November 2010.
4. If any election is contested the poll will take place on Thursday, 16th December 2010…..
That sounds pretty interesting because it is unusual for a Parish to have a bi-election. Most often people apply to fill the position and the Parish Council interviews candidates and co-opts someone to be a new Parish Councillor. But a formal poll by election can be called by a relatively small number of electors and the election is published as set out above. It will be interesting if more than one candidate is nominated and what the contest will be about? Will it be a straight political contest between the main national political parties or will there be at least one non aligned or independent candidate?
Whatever happens democracy costs money and election costs will have to be found from somewhere often much to the annoyance that this could have been avoided by a co-option at no cost.
I look forward to the Editor adding to this story.
John
I seem to recall that Parish Councils which are or aspire to quality status have to go through the election procedures for unfilled positions. If there are not enough candidates to fill them then they would be elected in an uncotested election.
I do not know if that is the reason in this case.
You are correct Michael about the requirements to achieve Quality Status but Councils are only required to show that at least two-thirds of councillors were elected.
Here is chapter and verse on Casual Vacancies.
Casual vacancies
Where a vacancy occurs during the term of a parish council, it may be filled by either election or cooption. Elections only occur if, following the advertisement of the vacancy for 14 days, 10 electors send a written request to the returning officer. If no request is received, the parish council will be required to fill the vacancies by cooption.
As you can see 10 actual electors must call the poll by election. It would be very unusual if only 10 existing parish councillors took this action together don’t you think?
As I said it will be interesting to see what the contest is about although if there is just one candidate then one wonders why 10 electors thought that the potential candidate might have not got through a co-option?