Kirklees Council is bidding to boost democracy.
The council, one of the largest metropolitan authorities in the country, is launching a Democracy Commission designed to bring forward improvements to the relationship between residents and politicians.
It hopes to encourage more people to vote, improve local decision making and attract a new generation of councillors.
The idea for the Commission came from a group of Kirklees councillors, chaired by councillor Andrew Palfreeman, which had been considering how the role and profile of elected councillors might change by 2020.
Clr Palfreeman said: “These problems are not confined to Kirklees.
“All the evidence illustrates lower participation in local elections, with reduced levels of trust in politicians nationally.
“Large sections of society also feel their views are not represented by their elected representatives.”
The Commission will be a joint project with Huddersfield University politics team.
It will gather both public and expert evidence from across Kirklees and the rest of the country before publishing a series of reports and recommendations in December.
This will be considered at Full Council and shared with local and national networks, including relevant government departments.
Dr Andrew Mycock, reader in Politics at the university, said: “This is an exciting and also a vital piece of work.
“In one sense, we should all be guarding against the risk that local democracy is not out of step with the changes in society.
“Kirklees has been clear for a number of years now about its changing relationship between council and citizens, not least that there is less money and services have to change, that communities need to do more for themselves and each other, and that technology can equally be a great enabler and a huge barrier to different groups.
“We know that people have not lost interest in their community – so why is there a drop off in interest in democracy?
“And if the role of the council is changing, why not the role of the councillor?
“But mainly, we need to understand how people feel democracy can be improved. It is would be wrong to think that we hold all those answers.”
Clr Palfreeman said the Commission’s deliberations will be led by the public.
He said: “What the last few weeks have clearly shown is that the public has strong ideas about how they should be served by their elected representatives.
“The Commission wants to hear from them and, we hope, might be able to encourage a real change in the basis of our democracy.”
Public information sessions about the Commission are being staged at: Huddersfield Town Hall (July 28, 10am-2pm, August 24, 10am-2pm and 6pm-9pm), Dewsbury Town Hall (August 15, 10am-2pm) and Batley Town Hall (August 15, 6pm-9pm).
