COMMUNITY COUNCILS AND POLITICAL PARTIES
The City of Edinburgh Council is currently engaged in a final round of consultation on its proposals for a revised scheme governing the city’s 41 community councils. It decided at a recent special meeting that it would retain a provision in the city’s scheme whereby local political party branches have the right to nominate candidates for election to the local interest group sections of community councils.
Edinburgh’s community council scheme is unique in that it allows up to one third of the membership of each community council to be nominated by local community groups. Usually these nominations are uncontested but occasionally, and perhaps more frequently in the future, these nominations could be contested. Because of the problems that arose in relation to the election of the community council in Craigmillar in 2006 the council has revised and upgraded its criteria which determine whether local interest groups may put forward a nomination for election this way.
It is actually debatable whether the city council scheme should allow political parties to nominate candidates for election to the local interest group section of community councils. The general practice has evolved across Scotland whereby community councils are generally regarded as non party-political.
On the other hand it can reasonably be argued that local party branches are an important source of local community initiative and energy and thus should have the right to seek to be involved in community councils.
However, open party political affiliation seems to go against the central idea of community councils and if more political parties and local community groups become more actively interested in representation on community councils as local interest groups then there are likely to be more contested elections for this form of representation with the increasing likelihood that this will lead to political parties campaigning against one another in an open and partisan way.
There may be some public gain from this situation. Under the new arrangements if political parties put forward candidates the internal governance of their local party branches will have to be vetted for standards of competence and integrity in order for the nominations to go forward. This may put council officials that conduct this task under unfair pressure from city councillors but it might raise the standard of conduct of local party branches.
Perhaps, too, in reaching its decision the City Council thought only of the four political parties represented in the council chamber. But there are more parties active in communities and contesting the Scottish, Westminster and European Parliaments elections. They too could put forward nominations under the proposed scheme and further pressurise the system.
It seems clear that the City Council should have a full debate, informed by the views of the public and community councils, before it reaches a final decision on this matter on 25 June 2009.
Norman Bonney, Chair, Edinburgh Association of Community Councils. 11/5/09
