Changes are coming to RBWM’s ward boundaries which could see communities weakened, your voice drowned out and governance diluted further. Here’s Wisdom Da Costa’s latest stand to improve democracy for residents

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As I previously reported in my blog, “Concerns about Council plans to redraw boundaries in Windsor – Blog“, RBWM is seeking to reduce the umber of councillors by 25% (14).

• A great cost saving measure I hear you say.
• Well actually no. On the basis that it might save a base cost of £112K (14 x £8K), compared to total allowances for 2016/17 (click link – it makes interesting reading) of £750K or, Gross Council of £260m, it might be a large price to pay for the large negative consequences

 

Large negative consequences

So what are the implications of the reduction in the number of councillors?

Put simply;

1. Wards will not mark out your community, which they could have with some thought and desire
2. Councillors covering more communities or bizarre areas are less likely to understand your needs and so less likely to be able to represent your needs effectively
3. Independent Councillors who come from your area and understand you, are less likely to be elected so, you know who are likely to be elected
4. Councillors will be overworked and so, less likely, if they are minded, to respond to your requests for help
5. Councillors will have to do more, read more, try and understand more as the same amount of work gets divvied out amongst fewer people – in other words, work won’t get done and, potentially dangerous issues will be missed – most Councillors have daytime jobs to earn a living
6. Overworked Councillors will be easier to control by central leadership, if off course they are minded to
7. In short, governance of our Royal Borough is likely to further deteriorate

The consequences are not what I want for you and probably too high a price to pay for a £112K saving, hence my response (below) to improve democracy for residents

What did Cllr. Da Costa say on your behalf?

Here are the Summary Requests and the Executive Summary – you can click here to read my full 13 page submission, if you really want to.

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Summary requests

1. Please amend the boundaries to help ensure interests and identities of local communities and, to facilitate effective and convenient local government. I suggest the 2 wards of
   1. Dedworth (4 members or 2 X 2 member wards of “Dedworth East” and “Dedworth West”) – more information below
   2. Clewer & St. Leonards (2 members) – more information below
2. Amend the number of Councillors to at least 47 to help ensure the interests and identities of local communities are more fairly represented and, to facilitate effective and convenient local government though, this will still put scrutiny, and so services, at risk in an already deficient Borough and, create workload and service difficulties.
3. Delay redrawing the ward boundaries until at least 2023 as the voter numbers are unreliable and will certainly create short term electoral inequalities and probably create significant long term inequalities and workload problems for Councillors.

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Back up information

Here are extracts of some of the attachments and back up information to my submission

 

 

 

 

Windsor Schools – Pupils from Windsor Area

		Windsor
School	Total Number On Roll	East Windsor	Eton	Windsor North	Windsor South	Windsor Villages	Windsor Total	Windsor %	Windsor East & Villages %	Windsor North (DEDWORTH) %	Windsor South (DEDWORTH) %	(DEDWORTH) Windsor North & South %
Dedworth Green First School	201	6	3	85	84	3	181	90.0%	5.0%	47.0%	46.4%	93.4%
Homer First School and Nursery	247	10	1	122	86	4	223	90.3%	6.3%	54.7%	38.6%	93.3%
Hilltop First School	255	15	1	64	108	4	192	75.3%	9.9%	33.3%	56.3%	89.6%
Alexander First School	135	6		9	103	8	126	93.3%	11.1%	7.1%	81.7%	88.9%
Clewer Green CE School	285	40	2	57	161	6	266	93.3%	17.3%	21.4%	60.5%	82.0%
Dedworth Middle School	462	23	30	133	216	24	426	92.2%	11.0%	31.2%	50.7%	81.9%
St Edward’s Catholic First School	283	72	7	94	80	6	259	91.5%	30.1%	36.3%	30.9%	67.2%
Braywood C of E First School	143	14		32	45	29	120	83.9%	35.8%	26.7%	37.5%	64.2%
St Edward’s Royal Free Ecumenical Middle School	475	146	15	123	141	7	432	90.9%	35.4%	28.5%	32.6%	61.1%
Windsor Girls’s School	710	127	38	148	158	59	530	74.6%	35.1%	27.9%	29.8%	57.7%
The Windsor Boys’ School	804	171	36	166	132	96	601	74.8%	44.4%	27.6%	22.0%	49.6%
Oakfield First School	286	157		47	63	2	269	94.1%	59.1%	17.5%	23.4%	40.9%
Trevelyan Middle School	508	159	33	44	83	30	349	68.7%	54.2%	12.6%	23.8%	36.4%
Trinity St Stephen Church of England First School	146	96	2	16	13	7	134	91.8%	76.9%	11.9%	9.7%	21.6%
The Queen Anne Royal Free CE First School	144	116	1	8	15	1	141	97.9%	83.0%	5.7%	10.6%	16.3%
The Royal School (Crown Aided)	99	6	3	4	3	41	57	57.6%	82.5%	7.0%	5.3%	12.3%
Eton Porny C of E First School	124	7	36	3	2	1	49	39.5%	16.3%	6.1%	4.1%	10.2%
St Peter’s Church of England Middle School	220	9	32	3	4	118	166	75.5%	76.5%	1.8%	2.4%	4.2%
Eton Wick C of E First School	161		106	3	1		110	68.3%	0.0%	2.7%	0.9%	3.6%
Kings Court First School	242	4		3		203	210	86.8%	98.6%	1.4%	0.0%	1.4%
	5,930	1,184	346	1,164	1,498	649	4,841
Child Poverty UK							3,300	68%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you found this useful and insightful.

Perhaps you agree with my points.

 

Let’s keep working together to put people first; justice and democracy for all.

 

Accountably yours,

Wisdom

WWRA Councillor, Wisdom Da Costa, Clewer North, Windsor

 

 

Caveat

This post is part of Cllr Wisdom Da Costa’s regular series of Blogs to inform and empower local residents; as he promised in his election leaflet

The views expressed in this article are not necessarily the views of the West Windsor Residents Association (WWRA).