ALTHOUGH I am a Ukip councillor on Shaftesbury Town Council, I speak for myself on this particular issue.

Not only are Dorset’s councils hell-bent on merging into two monolithic and remote unitary authorities as quickly as possible without a county-wide referendum, our Dorset County Councillors are also planning to put democracy on hold by scrapping the County Council elections due in May next year.

The Dorset County Council has recently resolved that “the county council do not wish the elections to take place in 2017, as the council wishes to pursue Local Government reform, subject to the results of the public consultation”.

Not only that, the timeline in the ‘Reshaping Your Councils’ consultation documentation shows that the next elections are to be held in May 2019 – a full two years later than due.

So, it looks like the democratic rights of the citizen are getting in the way of the county council’s political business for a couple of years, and democracy is to be the casualty!

This is an appalling way to operate in a modern, democratic country. Dorset county councillors should be working towards giving the residents more democracy, not removing it from them!

The councillors cannot vote themselves these extra two years on their own, they have to obtain government approval. But what they’ve done is take the first step with a final vote by them on November 10.

But, worryingly, they would surely not have made this move without advice and assurance from some quarter that they would be successful.

Who are they to even think they are too important to be held to account? This is political banditry of the first order and not worthy of the UK.

A petition has been set up on change.org (Democracy for Dorset Now!) to ensure the 2017 elections go ahead as planned in 2017, just follow the link www.democracy4dorset.uk, which I encourage all Dorset County Council voters to sign. Use it or lose it!.

Also, write to your local county councillor and MP to find out which of them are on the side of true democracy.

Mr L G Taylor

Salisbury Road, Shaftesbury

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