Hooray for voting on May 2! I agree with all that was said in the Letters page on April 26.
If only. Those of us in the North ward in Bradford on Avon had no vote in the town council elections, because there were six places and six candidates.
Four of these people are already on the town council and have been councillors for some time.
I don’t know if they were ever elected to their role. The two new members have not made themselves known to us in the ward at all, and I have no way of knowing how they got their place on the council, except that they put their names forward and they matched the number of vacancies.
No-one in the North ward has been able to exercise a democratic right to vote for the people who hold power to spend our taxes locally.
The town councillors cannot say they have a mandate for their term of office.
Please can we have more information about the role of councillors in advance of elections, to encourage more people to come forward? It cannot be healthy for these groups to be self-selected.
It is insulting to the democracy which has been so hard won and means that they lack a mix of views to encourage discussion and sensible decision making.
Kate Nottage, Whitehill, Bradford on Avon.
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