Author: Ellie Allen

So sorry, I’ve been distracted today and I need to talk about it. The link to local government might feel a bit tenuous at first, but bear with me.

Today Danny Kruger switched parties. Just in case you missed it: Danny was the Conservative MP for East Wiltshire, elected last year with 35.7% of the vote (down 30.2% on his 2019 result). Today he announced he was defecting to Reform UK, who came fourth in that seat at the general election. So the question is: will there be a by-election?

Danny Kruger says no!

And here’s the thing, the choice is entirely up to him. WHAT?! It turns out that when we vote in a general election we are not actually voting for a party, but for a person.

And that just seems like madness. Oxymoronic, even.

Because if we really were voting for a person, not a party, we’d surely see a lot more independents standing, and winning. But we don’t, because independents have almost no chance of entering Cabinet, and the Cabinet is where the big decisions are made. How much impact can a “party of one” have in a Parliament of 650?

Whips?

Then comes the next problem: whips. We vote for an MP to represent us, but the party whip tells them how to vote. If they defy it, even to reflect their constituency’s wishes, they risk being kicked out of the party, losing its backing, and almost certainly losing their seat at the next election.

So just think about that. The electorate votes for a person, not a party. But if that person votes against the party to honour the electorate, the party can eject them… and then the electorate is unlikely to re-elect them. No wonder people are disillusioned, feeling their vote doesn’t count.

And the Catch-22 doesn’t stop there. Ever since I could vote, it’s felt like a trap. I couldn’t vote for the party I actually wanted, because if I did, the party I most didn’t want might win. So instead, I had to vote for someone else, someone I didn’t fully believe in, just to stop the worst outcome. Every election felt like this relentless cycle of choosing against rather than for, and the whole system just seems absurdly designed to make you compromise your principles every single time.

I stopped listening in the last election. I want my children (now both voters themselves) to grow up in a democracy where they can vote for, not just against. And I feel that real change will only come if enough of us vote with our hearts, forcing the big parties to rethink the system.

A 650 people brouhaha

I do understand the counter-argument. If there were 650 independents in Parliament, how would a government form? Without a whip how would they come to decisions? Everyone wants lower taxes and lower bills, but someone has to face the realities of government. Purely localised voting could lead to gridlock.

But still, our current system is fundamentally flawed. It hasn’t really changed in over a century. Shouldn’t we at least be open to improvements?

And that brings me back to local government. Maybe reform has to start from the ground up. Parish and town councils, where party politics often doesn’t dominate, could be the place to test new approaches. They’re not perfect, and the framework they work within (hello again, 1972 Local Government Act) badly needs modernising. But precisely because they’re small-scale and more community; focused, they might be the right place to experiment, to pilot more transparent, responsive, people-first ways of doing politics.

So the real question is: how do we build better connections between parish councillors, Cornwall Councillors, and MPs? How do we create more collaboration across all levels of government, so that communities are represented as people first, not just party votes enforced by a whip?

Because surely democracy should be more than choosing between a rock and a hard place, especially when either choice leaves people worse off.

How do you fight 40 years of personalities and Chinese whispers?

Everyone seems to have an opinion about the council, whether it’s Redruth Town Council, Cornwall Council, or going back even further to Kerrier District Council. Often, it feels like people don’t even know which council they’re talking about; it all gets melded into one. And the opinions aren’t exactly glowing.

There are accusations flying around — people lining their pockets, “stealing” Christmas lights, or back in the day, stopping national retail chains from coming into town (because apparently councillors owned all the shops). And then there’s the “everyone knows the CCTV doesn’t work” line. How do people know? “Common knowledge,” I’m told. But let’s be honest: not every decision will please everyone, and some of these stories have clearly grown in the retelling.

What’s true? What’s not? And does something from 20 years ago really matter today? Maybe it matters, but there’s nothing we can do to change it now.

No answers, only more questions

So how do we turn it around? How do we stop the whispers? Can we stop the whispers? How do we wipe the slate clean, especially when some councillors have been on the council for over a decade, often serving on multiple councils over time? Everyone has opinions about everybody, often based on one decision made years ago. One woman I spoke to didn’t like someone simply because she’d been at school with them 50 years ago!

I think part of the problem is silence. If the council doesn’t talk about what it does, people assume nothing’s happening — and a vacuum quickly fills with stories, often nonsense. Explaining why decisions are made helps people understand them more. Many don’t really understand what the town council does, and that’s fair — the role had changed over time. In recent years, we’ve taken on things like the library, the community centre, and the civic centre.

I sometimes wonder if anyone else really cares. Until we put this all to bed and start afresh, it’s naive to expect people to listen, trust, or believe we’re on their side. And to be honest, who’s going to want to stand up and be a councillor? It’s like inheriting original sin, you take on all the dissatisfaction, gossip, and rumours of what went on before. People generally don’t want to join organisations with bad reputations, especially when we’re talking about volunteer positions.

No whispers from me…I’m loud and proud!

Yes, this is my page, and I’m not sure how I could make it fully reflect the council as a whole, I try. I know some councillors see it as showboating. The staff have their remit and their pages. I guess as a marketing professional it’s possibly easier for me, but I think it would be great if the individual councillors did their bit to help communicate, even if it’s just sharing council posts. Personally, I like being able to write in my own voice, and I don’t really want anyone else speaking for me.

That’s partly why I write a blog and post regularly on Facebook, it’s about transparency and trying to chip away at decades of hearsay.

The staff are currently drafting a communications strategy, and hopefully it will tackle this huge hurdle of years of whispers so we can start moving forward together.

If anyone has any bright ideas, please feel free to share!

Ahhhhh… sorry!
That was a bit of an unexpected break. But I think I needed it. I was starting to worry that this blog was turning into endless ranting and negativity about being a town councillor, which was never my intention.

I’m still not fully caught up on meetings, staff relationships, and festival dramas. But today I had a thought, and I feel like I need to share it.

Now, this isn’t unique to Redruth Town Council. It’s the state of affairs in parish and town councils up and down the country. So bear with me for a minute…

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Vote for Me, I Seem Nice!

When a charity is recruiting for non-executive board members (generally unpaid roles), they usually look for specific skills, qualities, experience, or education. They want people who understand strategy and have experience in setting strategic objectives.

So how do people go about choosing who they elect to their town or parish council?

And for the people putting themselves forward, what do they think they’re bringing to the table? Is just caring about a place enough? It’s a lovely sentiment, but let’s be honest: you wouldn’t let someone run a charity or a company just because they’re passionate. So why do we treat councils differently?

Now, hands up, and I’ll forgive you if you stop reading my blog in disgust, until this year I’m not sure I’ve ever voted in a town council election. I’m going to guess that wherever I’ve lived, there weren’t enough candidates to trigger a contested election. But I can’t say that with 100% certainty…..sorry!!

When I stood in the most recent election, I didn’t really talk much about my experience, skills, or qualities. I focused more on what I wanted to do. And honestly, I think people voted for me because they knew me. Maybe they thought I seemed like a nice person, they liked what I stood for. Some would have known my professional background; many wouldn’t have.

On the current council are, to name just a few: a retired PE teacher, a former postman, a shop owner, and a retired publican. I have no idea what strategic experience (if any) most of my fellow councillors have, and I doubt their constituents do either.

Yet strategy is a huge part of the job.

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Big Bucks, No Checks?

Just to reiterate: Redruth Town Council manages £1,381,718 of public money, raised through the precept.

And unlike schools (monitored by Ofsted) or the NHS and care homes (regulated by the CQC), there is no external body consistently monitoring or inspecting town and parish councils. Yes, there’s a required annual financial audit. And there are organisations like the National Association of Local Councils (NALC), the Cornwall Association of Local Councils (CALC), and the Local Council Award Scheme. But in real terms, there’s no routine oversight of whether councils are performing effectively or appropriately.

Across much of Cornwall (with the exceptions of Falmouth, Bude/Stratton and Redruth), many councillors have not been elected at all. They’ve simply put themselves forward, uncontested. Their skills and experience? Unknown, and apparently irrelevant. They’re in!

And we’re talking about big sums of money:

• Truro: £3,197,665
• Bodmin: £1,914,498
• Newquay: £2,851,214

It doesn’t make sense to me that this entire system is so unregulated.

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This isn’t OK – Time to Shake Things Up?

Yes, there is a Town Clerk, and their role is to ensure the council operates legally and follows proper procedures. But if councillors themselves have no experience of strategic working or even a clear understanding of their role, how can they properly support or oversee the Clerk’s work?

In practice, the only people watching the Clerk are the councillors. And the only person watching the councillors is the Clerk.

And for the Clerk, rocking the boat with councillors could put their job security at risk.

Across the country, in towns and parishes, there are people sitting in rooms making decisions with your money. Often unelected, potentially lacking key skills or experience, and sometimes with no real willingness to listen, learn or improve.

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We need a new system.
We need better understanding.
We need fresh blood.

I’ve had to make a few educated guesses, but I reckon the average age of a Redruth Town Councillor is currently over 60. Six of our councillors are retired. At 46, and as a mother of two lads in their 20s, I’m something of a spring chicken on the council. I know, I know… I’m hardly young, but you get the idea.

In terms of gender, with one seat currently vacant, women actually outnumber men 7 to 6. We’ll have to see what the upcoming by-election brings, there are three candidates: two men and one woman. Two of them, I suspect, are over 60, and one is a mere 21!

But why is the council made up the way it is? Is it the time commitment? A stage-of-life thing? Retired people aren’t necessarily more invested in their towns than younger people. As a parent, you may have less time, but arguably more reason,to want your community to thrive. Or is it that people simply don’t know how to get involved? Maybe it’s the pomp and formality, I mean, I never imagined myself sitting on a PTA (mainly because both my boys were nightmares at school). But do councils feel like they’re only for certain “types” of people? Because they really shouldn’t.

We need to make the environment more welcoming and less… hierarchical. Let’s be honest, council chambers do have a bit of a school assembly feel to them, if school assemblies were run by people who love reminising and voting!

Councillors for life…

Many councillors are now in their third, fourth, or even fifth term. One’s just embarked on his tenth. Sometimes I genuinely wonder why some are still there. They seem more focused on wrapping meetings up as fast as possible, and a lot of “debate” ends up being a sort of nostalgic one-upmanship about how things were done in the ’00s. Those who’ve been around for decades don’t seem to think it’s time to step aside to make room for new voices. Their experience is seen as invaluable; by them, at least. But no one is irreplaceable.

When incumbents lost their seats at the last election, it was declared a great “shame”, as if it were our fault for daring to stand against them. When we first joined, we were “welcomed” through gritted teeth. “It’s great to have some new people standing,” they said. Though you had to wonder who, exactly, they expected to step aside to make space…

Just yesterday we were pondering whether it would be possible to limit how many terms someone can serve. There’s already a rule, quite a recent one, that a mayor can only serve for two years in a row. Could we do something similar for councillors? I mean, the US President can only serve two terms (slightly bigger job, granted, but the principle stands). Sadly, a bit of digging revealed that UK law allows anyone who meets the criteria to stand again and again… and again.

The best we could do is a voluntary approach, perhaps a statement of intent that encourages councillors to step down after, say, two terms to allow space for fresh voices. But honestly, I can’t imagine many of the current crop signing up to that.

New and not really welcome…

When we joined, there were all sorts of warnings about the dangers of “too many new councillors”, as if we were some sort of rogue element. Offers of help were few and far between. The induction felt more like indoctrination. I was even told: “When we first started this council, there were loads of busybodies who wanted to change the world. They soon realised they were only on Redruth Town Council and just getting on everyone’s nerves, they didn’t last long.”

The message was clear: This is the way things are. Don’t rock the boat.

But entering a space and being told “there’s no room for debate” is difficult, especially for younger generations. Yes, change is uncomfortable. And yes, everything is decided by vote, and I’m often outnumbered. But the Nolan Principles remind us that the first rule of public service is selflessness: acting solely in the public interest. And that includes building a council that is diverse and representative. I’m determined to help make that happen.

And who’s actually responsible for encouraging people to run? If you’re happy sitting on the council forever, why would you actively encourage others to stand and risk losing your seat?

There’s a narrative that younger people, or anyone outside the retired demographic, just aren’t interested. But it’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you make the environment unwelcoming, rigid, and obscure, of course people won’t be interested.

We need to do more…

We can’t control who stands for election, but we can influence the culture. The council could do a lot more. Right now, we do the bare minimum. When a seat recently became available, I think there was one Facebook post and an announcement on the council website (probably because we legally had to). We could and should be more open, more welcoming, and more transparent.

Meetings shouldn’t be shackled to “the way we’ve always done it.” That benefits no one. Mentoring should be structured and meaningful, not just left to chance.

Ha! This blog was meant to inspire people to stand for council. Maybe it still will, if only because people read it and think, “Wow… this could be done so much better.”

And you know what? It absolutely could.

It hasn’t been easy, but we’ve had some wins. I think it’s time I started sharing them…

I’m going to take a break there from my first meeting double-header. I might come back to it, I might not. I think you’ve got the gist of what was going on: a lot of paper, a lot of voting, and a lot of important, yet somehow seemingly unimportant, decisions to be made.

Although perhaps unintentional, I felt patronised and sidelined by the idea that a new councillor couldn’t possibly get their head around it all. It wasn’t about gender or age, it was universal. We were “the newbies,” and the unspoken assumption was that we wouldn’t understand.

But while it’s still fresh in my mind, I’d like to talk about another really strange dynamic at play in the world of Town Councils: strategy vs operations.

Before I joined, I assumed being a councillor was a bit like sitting on a board. Now, I’ve never actually sat on a board, but I’ve worked with them in several of my roles, so I thought I could wrap my head around it. I’m a hands-on person with lots of ideas, but I also like strategy. I like a reason for doing things. I like objectives, goals, and the sense that everyone is pulling in the same direction.

How and when that sort of strategy planning would happen, I wasn’t sure. But with a new council, five of us were newly elected, (over a third of the chamber) I assumed we’d shape something together. In business, you rarely do anything without knowing why you’re doing it, right? Even if the reason is simply to make money.

What I stand for…

When I stood for election, I had a clear mandate. And, I want to do what I said I would for the people who elected me. Of course, I also know I am just one councillor among fourteen, each representing a different slice of the community. The challenge would be bringing all those ideas together into a strategy for the good of the town as a whole.

For the four of us who stood together, our shared priorities were:

• Community involvement -creating open forums where everyone can have their say.
• Transparency – making council decisions easy to access and understand. (This one caused a stir. Yes, technically all decisions are made in meetings, and yes, minutes are online. But our point was: people shouldn’t have to dig around to find them. If something affects you and your street, you should know about it, clearly and directly.)
• Collaboration – working with residents on real issues like housing, sustainability, and local business. (Admittedly, much of this isn’t within the Town Council’s direct control. But we can at least understand the problems, explore solutions, and lobby on behalf of the town.)

Three months in, these are still my guiding principles. They feel like the groundwork for being an effective councillor. I’ve kept my election Facebook page going, I share snapshots from meetings, promote upcoming agendas, and ask questions of the public. With a marketing and comms background, that side of it comes naturally.

It hasn’t been universally popular, though. Sometimes I get the sense that others think I’m grandstanding, or trying to take the credit. That it’s about me. But it isn’t about me, it’s about making sure people can actually see what’s going on. And with no one else doing it, I’m just filling a hole.

And the meetings…

But the meetings themselves? They don’t seem to operate at a strategic level. Recently we voted on whether to clean some signs. Signs! Meanwhile, when I asked about the council’s objectives, I was told they had already been set in February, before I was even elected, during a strategic review. Not just for this term either, but stretching halfway into the next.

An election year seemed like a weird time to carry out a strategic review. Like the election meant nothing. Like there would be no change and everyone would just carry on. To me, it seemed logical that strategic objectives should be set at the start of any new term, not inherited from the previous lot with a smile and a nod.

Of course, objectives can develop and evolve. But it still felt odd to me that I’d been elected on a mandate, only to discover the direction of the council for my entire term had essentially already been decided. And when I thought back to those first leadership elections, where the chair and committee roles were settled almost instantly, it made sense why. A course had already been charted.

And so, I couldn’t help but wonder: what exactly is my role here?

So, I was official a Councillor and we’d elected our Mayor and Deputy Mayor. It all seemed perfunctory, something really important, but at the same time not treated with much importance at all. How important can a decision be if you’re expected to make it instantly, without really understanding what’s going on?

It felt like the start of a theme that would keep repeating. The message was: the returning councillors know what they’re doing, so just leave it up to them. This local council stuff is very complicated and it will take you a long time to get used to it. A recently co-opted councillor even admitted often that they didn’t really understand what was happening, and so left it up to the others “who knew what they were doing.”

To me, that doesn’t sound like support or induction. It feels like a way of shutting down a new councillor. Instead of helping us get to grips with things, it’s easier to say, “you couldn’t possibly understand this”, and encourage us to sit quietly and not get involved. That’s never really been my forte.

We only had 5 new councillors out of 14. But, I kept wondering, how would it work if there were 10, 12, or even all 14 of us who were new? Would we still be expected to blindly vote? This is the system up and down the country, in bigger councils it’s party politics. The leader of the largest party becomes the leader. But in this context, it just feels nonsensical.

Anyway, I digress, on to the rest of the agenda.

Next up Councillor…

Next up: reviewing the terms of reference for committees and the delegation arrangements to committees and employees. I’d come prepared, I consider myself a thorough person, so I had read and annotated all the documents (pages 3–12 of the pack).

But here’s the thing: I’ve sat in plenty of business meetings for work, and I’ve never been asked to just sign off nine pieces of paper without any discussion or context. Yet in this setting, that was clearly what was expected. It made me wonder, had some councillors never really understood the documents either? But after years of nodding them through, was it simply too late to start asking questions?

This year there were noticeable changes. Some committee names had shifted, and several functions had been added, altered or removed. I asked why, and was told it was down to a restructure. But the message was clear: don’t worry about it, just sign it off and move on.

More voting…

And then it was time to elect the chairs and vice-chairs for the five committees: Asset Management, Community, Planning, Finance and Staffing.

I’d studied the agenda carefully, so I knew what the committees were responsible for. But I didn’t know the people in the room, who had what skills, experience, or knowledge. And none of them knew me, or any of the other new councillors, either.

And yet, by the end of the process, Jack and I had both ended up as Vice-Chairs, him of Community, me of Finance. Which means that if the Chair is unavailable, I’ll be leading those meetings.

The atmosphere in the room suggested that for many, this meeting was just one to get through. Vote, agree, move on. For me though, this felt like the important stuff, setting the framework for how the council, the councillors, and the meetings actually work.

Somehow, despite all the nodding along and lack of debate, the meeting still felt like wading through treacle, and I wasn’t even at the end of the agenda yet.