The results of a consultation into how Derby runs its local elections has shown a majority in support of moving to four-yearly ‘all council’ elections, with 82.8% responding in favour of the switch.
The results of the consultation will now be debated at an Extraordinary Meeting of the Council on Wednesday 23rd September when Councillors from all parties will vote on a resolution to move to ‘all-council’ elections, where all councillors are elected simultaneously once every four years. To pass, two thirds of Councillors present at the meeting must vote in favour of the resolution, which must specify the year in which the new election arrangements should begin. Councillors could vote to amend the resolution at the meeting.
Currently, local elections in Derby operate on a ‘by thirds’ system with elections held three years in every four, electing one Councillor for each of the 17 wards.
The new system would see one election held every four years with all 51 seats contested at once and three councillors elected in each ward.
The consultation ran between 27 January and 23 March 2020. There were 501 individual responses with 82.8 per cent of respondents indicating they would prefer a change to whole council elections and 15.6 per cent preferring to maintain existing electoral arrangements.
Emily Feenan, Monitoring Officer and Returning Officer said:
Now we have had the result of the consultation it’s important that Councillors get the opportunity to discuss these results and to share their views on how we should proceed and what they feel is best for Derby.