Election time

Question

Morning.

We are a Parish Council made you of 6 wards. We have 21 Cllrs. Come election time if 22 people put themselves forward for election would everyone’s seat be challenged or just those in the ward for the 22nd person is standing?
Context: There is a very, very obstructive Cllr who really needs to hang up his coat, but it’ll never happen because the council have never been proactive in ‘marketing’ the election.

I and other Cllrs wish to promote the council at election time, even at the risk of our own seats. However we want to (personally) push for candidates in his ward.
This probably seems petty and I will understand others views on this but the council need new blood!!

Answer 1

If you have 6 wards, say for example: 5 wards of 3 councillors and 1 ward of 6 councillors, then if only 3 candidates put themselves up in the ward with 3 seats, there is no election in the ward, they are elected without contest.

If you have 4 candidates in a ward with 3 seats then you have an election. So in a village or town you could have one part of town with an election and one part without. (Depending on where your polling stations are, you could have some people in the village hall with one ballot paper (e.g. district) and the other side of the polling station with 2 (district and parish).

If others want that councillor out, put up at least as many candidates as there are seats in that ward (the clerk can confirm each ward), then if he re-stands, there will be an election in 'his' ward, and the other candidates can run an election campaign (and because the area is usually quite small, it can be quite cheap - but they have to follow the Electoral Commission rules). They can even run on a local 'slate' so 4 candidates can stand together with a description of "Make West Village Nicer" (max 6 words).

In the lead up to the election period, the Parish Council has powers to promote / advertise a forthcoming election (there are NALC resources for this https://www.nalc.gov.uk/elections) that be shared online or even promoted on Facebook, etc. (Obviously, they can't promote a candidate).

(edited as I got the numbers wrong at the top).

Answer 2

Surely, if the Parish is warded, candidates must nominate which wards they want to stand in?  I presume that the unrespected cllr expects to get elected without his ward being contested? What you could do is get the other member or members to persuade somebody to stand for election in the ward to make it contested, and for that person and the other ward cllr candidates to put out a letter box newsletter explaining why paritioners should vote for them all .  It would then be down to the obstructive one to issue his own newsletter.

Answer 3

To simplify the answers already given, you stand for a ward, not a council, so each ward is treated individually.

Answer 4

One local council has 12 seats but one Ward so if 13 stand everybody has to stand for election
Next door has three wards.

So at the last election there were enough candidates for the total seats but over subscribed in the first ward, one candidate per seat in the second and one too few candidates in the the third

The one to lose out  in the first Ward was the Chairman who was highly unpopular with the residents

So at the first meeting he was coopted and then reappointed as Chairman the residents couldn’t believe it

Comments

One of mine had a contested election last year and still ended up with vacancies, for the same reason.

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What do you mean by "next door"? Are you saying there are 4 wards, with one having 12 Councillors?