Tory Council blunder costs taxpayers thousands of pounds.
Some of you will have read locally that there is going to be a by-election in Kempshott next month. This seems a bit odd seeing as we’ve just had local elections earlier in May. Well, this is what has happened.
The local Tory Councillor for Kempshott, Anne Court has been unwell and by the sounds of it very unwell and hasn’t been able to attend a council meeting since 1st Nov 2017.
There is a national rule in councils that says if a councillor doesn’t attend a meeting for 6 months, then they have in effect resigned from the council.
What should happen is that before the 6 months is up, a request goes to a council meeting to ask if the 6 month rule can be suspended because the councillor can’t help not attending a meeting and it would be unfair to kick them off the council. This has happened a number of times here before.
For some unknown reason it didn’t happen in this case and so Anne Court has been kicked off the council. We don’t know whether this was deliberate, did her Tory bosses no longer want her around or has someone dropped the ball and not spotted that this was about to happen.
Either way, taxpayers are now having to spend thousands of pounds to hold a by-election that really is unnecessary. We’ll be taking this up as part of our campaign on council waste.