LAUNCESTON Town Council has sent another response to the Local Government Boundary Commission for England’s (LGBCE) consultation as it carries out an electoral review of Cornwall Council.

The town council decided to submit a supplementary response as it said Cornwall Council’s submission to the consultation went against the local authority’s own working group.

The LGBCE has previously recommended that Cornwall Council should have 87 councillors in the future. It currently has 123 councillors.

The town council and the local authority both set up working parties to look at how division boundaries could be re-drawn.

Cornwall Council at its full council meeting agreed a scheme of 87 divisions it submitted to the LGBCE.

Prior to this, Launceston Town Council had responded to the consultation proposing a two-member ward for their area, with its working group favouring a possibility in which both Launceston based councillors should represent an even division of electors from the town and its rural hinterland.

One ward it suggested for the Community Network Area omitted Stoke Climsland and proposed that it move to the Callington community network, to produce a ward with an electorate number that would be acceptable to the LGBCE.

Launceston town clerk Christopher Drake wrote to the LGBCE: “Launceston Town Council is aware that the response of Cornwall Council to this consultation is based on the number of councillors being 87 and not the 88 recommended to it by its own working party dealing with the minutiae of this matter.

“A member of Launceston Town Council has been present throughout the vast majority of the deliberations of the working party set up by Cornwall Council to consider this matter and my council has been supportive of the views made by the working party and its recommendations made to council.

“The most significant of these recommendations was based on the realisation that a cluster of councils in the South East of the Duchy were faced with the likelihood of a large proportion of them having electoral sizes above the recommended ideal of 5163, to the extent that the 10% leeway was being closely approached. To deal with this situation, it was proposed by the working party that one additional councillor be added for this area, thereby bringing the total number of councillors for Cornwall to 88.

“This approach would mean that there would be sufficient leeway created in that area for changes in ward boundaries that are more suitable to local sensibilities and topography. Further it will ensure that a significant proportion of the wards in this area are not so close to the 10% leeway that the figure will inevitably be exceeded in the comparatively near future.

“Such a change would undoubtedly assist our own area as it would immediately allow the parish of Stoke Climsland to be aligned with those areas to which it is more historically associated. However the decision of Cornwall Council not to endorse the conclusion of its own working party, flies in the face of the need to ensure proper ward electorate numbers associated with the proposed median across this entire section of the Duchy and in the process endorses a situation that is entirely unacceptable to Launceston Town Council in the way in which it ‘bundles’ together parishes with no regard to local considerations or input.

“Reports received by Launceston Town Council indicate that this decision by Cornwall Council was based solely upon the interest of party politics and ignored the sound and well reasoned grounds of the recommendations of its own working party.

“Launceston Town Council therefore respectfully requests that the approach of an 88 councillor total for Cornwall, as per the recommendations of the Cornwall Council working party, be agreed.”

Malcolm Brown, chairman of Cornwall Council’s electoral review panel, said: “The council’s electoral review panel recommended to full council a scheme of 87 divisions. It also provided full council with two schemes of 88 divisions that could be recommended to the commission in addition to the scheme of 87.

“Members at the full council meeting on February 13 first settled the scheme of 87 divisions to be submitted as the council’s response to the Local Government Boundary Commission’s consultation. They were then asked whether they wished to support the principle of submitting a scheme of 88 divisions as well.

“On the day the vote was in favour of not also submitted a scheme of 88 divisions, a decision the members were entitled to make. Critically, the commission has consulted on divisions for a council size of 87 and the full council accepted the recommendations of the Panel in that regard, including a minor variation which was incorporated in the scheme moved and seconded by the panel chairman and vice-chairman respectively.

“The comments attributed to Launceston Town Council are regrettable and not entirely accurate, but they are, of course, entitled to express their view.”

All of the responses sent to the LGBCE will be analysed before it publishes its recommendations for the electoral divisions on May 8. There will then be a further period of public consultation on these proposals before the LGBCE publishes its final recommendations on October 2.

The Order implementing the final electoral arrangements will then be laid before Parliament with the changes coming into effect for the 2021 elections.