Cannock Chase Council leader explains decision to request election delay

The district council has also been affected by recruitment issues “for several years”, Steve Thornley told fellow elected members, with many of the unfilled posts being in administrative roles.

Cannock Chase Council is due to be abolished in two years’ time, alongside Staffordshire’s other district and borough authorities and the county council. They will be replaced by a unitary authority system as part of the national shake-up of local government, with details of the new councils yet to be finalised.

A third of seats on Cannock Chase Council were due to be contested in May, as the authority runs elections three out of every four years. In December the national government said it would consider postponing elections at councils undergoing local government reorganisation where there were concerns over capacity issues – and Councillor Thornley has written to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to request a delay.

At Wednesday’s full council meeting (January 21), he stressed that he could not personally cancel or defer elections. The decision would be made by the Secretary of State.

Councillor Thornley said: “Local government reorganisation is a top Government priority. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government recently issued a list of local government reorganisation preparatory activities – this list is huge.

“All councils need to be focused on this work in preparing for local government reorganisation. It is likely some staff will be seconded to work with colleagues across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent and other resources including finance will also have to be made available.

“Council chief executives will be meeting on January 22 to plan for this work. This will require considerable input from the chief executive and leadership team – let’s not forget the Section 151 Officer (responsible for the council’s financial administration) is also the Returning Officer (responsible for overseeing elections).

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“This council’s top priority is the delivery of the town centre regeneration programme – it is hugely complex and it is also high risk. One of the largest council departments is housing, and this is also undergoing change.

“The council has been facing challenges in recruitment in professional roles for several years. As of October 31 there were 45 vacancies across the council and this is 30% of the workforce – of these 18 of these are within the corporate support service.

“We have already seen the impact of extra work local government reorganisation is having. And demand from the public and members on services continues to grow.”

Tamworth Borough Council, which is also Labour-run, has also requested its elections for 10 seats be delayed this year to allow the authority to focus on local government reorganisation. Council leader Carol Dean said this had not been an easy decision but insisted the council was taking a pragmatic approach.

But the Conservative-run Newcastle Borough Council announced last month it remained committed to running elections on May 7 for all 44 seats. Council leader Simon Tagg said: “First, the Government forces local government reorganisation on communities when there wasn’t any demand for it, now it suggests delaying scheduled elections while it tries to make the change work.”