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How district councillors seem to set policies - Trevor Maroney (28th Nov 2017  12:42:45) To set district policies it appears that all a councillor has to do these days is agree a position with their colleagues, make a statement saying it’s a ‘submission from East Hampshire District Council Cabinet’ and provided they add the word ‘members’ It’s perfectly acceptable. So Cllr. Angela Glass told the Bramshott & Liphook Parish Council last night to justify the Boundary Commission website entry showing that multi-councillor wards was EHDC endorsed policy. She made this statement after being reminded that no Cabinet meeting had ever taken place to discuss and agree this position, and that the District Council Leader had confirmed in writing that “the Council does not have a policy on multi-member wards….” Is this acceptable decision making or are we heading for anarchy? The district councillors were also asked why EHDC submitted Baseline Data to the Boundary Commission in November 2016 stating that planning permission for Lowsley Farm Phase 2 had been refused when it had clearly been granted on 1st June 2016, 5 months earlier. In other words, the document contained mistakes and had not been scrutinised by the district councillors before being sent – they were unaware of its existence until last night (27th November 2017). It only surfaced last Friday in response to pressing questions on the inflated, projected, electorate figures for Four Marks and Medstead. What are the consequences you may well ask? In their draft recommendations the Boundary Commission concluded that the Bramshott & Liphook multi-councillor ward would have an electorate of 7,486: 2,495 or + 9% above the average (2,294) in 2023. However, these figures did not include Phase 2. As I explained, this will add 175 dwellings and about 315 electorate pushing the projected total to 7,800 or 13.34% well about the +/- 10% criteria set by the Commission. So what does this mean? This means, as the Parish Council were clearly told last night, that between 250 and 300 electors will have to be transferred to an adjacent ward. Unfortunately we now have less than a fortnight to decide which areas will be affected, whereas originally we would have had a year had the mistake been spotted in time. In my view we are in this situation because the district council is not being held to account.

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