Public says no to more grassroots democracy

Scarborough Council had responded to the Big Society vision by canvassing opinion on setting up community councils to provide neighbourhoods lacking a parish or town council with a local voice.

The target to trigger a full review of the idea would have been at least 2,000 replies. But the Scarborough response was less than a quarter of that.

The feedback form those residents who did bother to have their say was that they did not think much of the idea anyway – and that it would money wasted on pen-pushing.

Head of legal services Ian Anderson said: “The Government wishes to encourage the Big Society whereby all citizens play a part in shaping their neighbourhood.

“At the local level, community councils have the democratic legitimacy to take actions to improve the local area, which other groups do not possess.”

In the case of the central urban area of Scarborough, there had been no petition or other signs of public support for parishing the area.

Therefore it was considered prudent to carry out consultation with the public first.

The consultation resulted in 472 responses from the public. Of these 77.5 per cent voted against establishing a parish or community council for the area with only 22.2 in favour.

The main two reasons cited by the no vote were that a community council was perceived as an additional and unnecessary level of bureaucracy and they did not wish to pay for a community council, officials say.

The lack of enthusiasm for the local councils means there will be no need to proceed to the next stage of a full review of the idea, a report says.