Long Sutton councillor is no longer politically aligned and hits out at plan to reduce committee sizes

A politically unaligned councillor feels that members will no longer have their say under plans to cut the size of committees.

Long Sutton councillor David Wilkinson is one of three members of South Holland District Council who are no longer part of a political party, and is unhappy about proposed changes to how the authority conducts its business.

The district council is looking to reduce the number of seats available on a number of key committees, including planning, to achieve greater efficiency.

He said: “I think this is very sad as it no longer gives the opportunity for members to have their say.

“As I understood, there is no reason for making this change either financially or from an organisational standpoint, coupled with the fact that we only have two years left as a district, there seems no point.”

The district council, which is due to be scrapped along with Lincolnshire County Council as part of Local Government Reforms (LGR) - has proposed to reduce the 15 places on the planning committee to 11 from July.

The council’s scrutiny committees, Policy Development Panel and Policy Monitoring Panel, are also due to be reduced to 11 seats.

Cllr Wilkinson is not the only councillor unhappy with the changes, as it was branded as the ‘worst possible moment’ by Cllr Chris Brewis at the last full council meeting due to local government reorganisation.

Concerns about reducing the size of the planning committee were raised by Cllr Bryan Alcock and Cllr Andrew Tennant, who feared that the number of votes on applications could drop to as low as seven.

Cllr Wilkinson said that he was previously aligned to South Holland Independents and has decided that he no longer wishes to be.