Posts tagged ‘Local Government’
Local Government: Election summary
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011Local council elections mirrored many of the parties’ performances at Stormont. Emma Blee analyses the results. The Alliance Party has emerged as the biggest winner of the local council elections, profiting from the misfortune of the UUP and SDLP. It was a memorable election for the cross-community party, which increased its seats by 14 and doubled its representation in Belfast, again holding the balance of power. The DUP and Sinn Féin were resilient and remain the dominant parties, accounting for 53 per cent of the council seats. While the DUP stays on top, its numbers were slightly...[full story]
Local Government: Restarting council reform
Friday, March 11th, 2011The Executive has proposed new governance arrangements, ethical standards and powers for district councils. agendaNi reviews the recommendations. A partnership panel between local and central government is among the proposals outlined in the public consultation. The consultation document reads: “The existing relationships between departments and their agencies and the local government sector, whether at a representative level through the Northern Ireland Local Government Association or at a local level with individual councils, are informal, ad hoc and inconsistent. They do not provide...[full story]
Local Government: Planning power for councils
Friday, January 28th, 2011Edwin Poots has released details of the “most sweeping reforms to the planning system for 30 years” but other MLAs question its timing. Emma Blee analyses the plans. Councillors across Northern Ireland are to take on responsibility for planning decisions in their areas, under new proposals within the Planning Bill. Edwin Poots has said that the new legislation will “transform the planning system” and return control to councils. A draft Planning Bill has been agreed by the Executive and is now being considered by the Assembly’s Environment Committee. Most planning functions...[full story]
Local Government: Sharing power locally
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010Power-sharing or the lack of it becomes contentious in areas where one community is a small minority. Nationalists have claimed they have been excluded from posts on Lisburn City Council while unionist councillors have said the same about Newry and Mourne District Council’s main jobs. There are unionist majorities in 13 councils and nationalist majorities in 11. In two councils – Belfast and Armagh – neither community has overall ‘control’. Research by agendaNi has found that 12 councils use the d’Hondt system i.e. Belfast, Armagh and all nationalist-held councils except...[full story]
Local Government: Out from the crowd
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010By all accounts Northern Ireland is well represented at local government level. A total of 582 councillors sit across the 26 districts, debating planning applications, local leisure facilities and waste collection. Of that 582, only 30 currently sit as independents. Certainly a minority, independent members are still found more often in the councils rather than Stormont or at Westminster. It says something, though, that the highest number of them on any council is three, in Moyle and Newry and Mourne. In 1973, the first election for the newly established councils, there were 59 independents....[full story]
Local Government: Southern local cuts
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010With 29 county councils, 75 town councils, five city councils, eight borough councils, eight regional authorities and two regional assemblies within its local government administration, the Irish Government has largely accepted that it must be downsized in order to save money. The Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure (An Bord Snip) initially speculated that cuts of €5.3 billion were required in the Republic’s public sector. Its recommendations for local government cuts included reducing the number of county and city councils from 34 to 22. However, when the Irish...[full story]
Local Government: Changes in the local arena
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010Now in its sixth year since the last poll, the local government landscape has slightly altered but not through the usual route of election. Of the 582 councillors elected five years ago, the DUP topped the poll with 182, 56 ahead of second-placed Sinn Féin. The DUP’s total now sits at 163, largely because of the TUV’s rise, though there has been a subsequent fall in their fortunes and at the time of writing its influence was limited to 11 councillors. The trouble has not solely been confined to the DUP, though. Sinn Féin, too, have lost ground. The party is nine councillors short...[full story]
Local Government: Reform and deadlock
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010With reports that the new 11 councils will be postponed to 2015, as agendaNi went to press, local government reform appears to have gone full circle since its beginnings eight years ago. Next May’s elections look set to be held using the existing 26 authorities. Northern Ireland’s councils have been very much the poor relation of central government since the early 1970s when housing, schools, roads and water were brought under regional control. An introduction to the Review of Public Administration, published in October 2003, reported that central government was reluctant to give...[full story]
