Report recommends Peterborough council considers elections switch to once every four years

A new report has recommended that Peterborough City Council considers switching from three elections in a four-year cycle to once every four years all-out elections.

The report was commissioned by the council after a governance report by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities suggested that the council formally consider making the change.

At present, council elections operate in a four-year cycle with three consecutive years of elections, followed by a fallow year in the fourth. In the first year, seats for 18 of the city’s 60 wards are elected, 20 in the second year and 22 in the third.

There are city council elections scheduled for both 2023 and 2024 at present.

The move was said to encourage stable decision-making and help tackle long-term challenges.

The report states that moving to whole council elections would cost the Council £625K less over a ten-year period, with around £62k saving per year compared to elections by thirds.

A one-off investment of £410K would be needed for the first year of ‘all out’ elections, which could be sought from the Transformation Reserve.

Supporters have suggested it would bring more stability and be more cost-effective, while critics have suggested that it would give one side unchallenged power for four years and also make it tougher for smaller parties to stand enough candidates.

A public consultation was held over eight weeks between July and September. Of the 232 people that responded, 150 said that they were in favour of moving to all-out elections. 130 of those people were in favour of doing so from 2023.

The report does, however, suggest that waiting until 2024 and running it at the same time as the Police and Crime Commissioner elections and potential parliamentary elections could be more cost-effective.

Peterborough MP Paul Bristow was consulted on the change. He raised concerns about the consultation process and warned against taking its findings too seriously.

He said: “I am concerned by the consultation form itself, which the council has framed as an online poll. Reasons and evidence are treated as incidental, left for “any other comments” that the respondent “may have” to fill a one-line, non-expanding box.

Consultations are not polls because the responses are self-selecting and unrepresentative. Their purpose should be to elicit thorough and well-argued responses, which the structure of the online form actively discourages. This does not follow best practice.

“The vast majority of Peterborough’s voters will not be aware of the consultation. I hope that local residents will not have their electoral arrangements changed by a tiny minority who are aware but have nothing substantive to say. A single good reason should be given

greater weight than a hundred ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers, because the outcome should rely on the merits of the argument alone.

"The Government asked us to consider whether changing the electoral cycle would help us and that case is at best unproven, with the evidence pointing the other way. In my view, we should stick with the arrangements that we have.”

An extraordinary council meeting has been called on Wednesday October 12 to vote on the proposals. The change would need a two-thirds majority to pass.