By An Oxfordshire Green Party councillor has denounced a Conservative motion that proposes delaying Oxfordshire County Council elections by a year, to 2022. Elections are currently due to take place in May 2021.
Tory councillor Ian Hudspeth will table the proposal to the next meeting of Oxfordshire County Council. The move is widely seen as a response to proposals from Whitehall that would see a restructuring of ‘two tier’ localities such as Oxfordshire, to be laid out by the government in a white paper later this year.
But the move has been condemned beyond the Tory fold, with the Labour leader of Oxford City Council, Susan Brown calling the idea “quite extraordinary”, and a group of Liberal Democrats writing to the Oxford Mail to declare it “unacceptable.”
Now Green Party Oxfordshire County Councillor Pete Sudbury has added his name to the growing list of those lambasting the proposed delay. Mr Sudbury, who represents Wallingford on the County Council, issued a statement today ridiculing Mr Hudspeth’s proposal, saying that ‘cancelling elections… does not support “a vibrant local democracy”.’ He further claimed that Conservative plans to restructure the councils had already been “soundly rejected” by local voters. He went on to say that local elections are a “keystone of any democracy, and Oxfordshire’s County councillors have no mandate for a second term.”
Earlier this year the government passed the Coronavirus Act 2020 which included provisions for the delay of local elections previously slated to take place on May 7th. Delay to Oxfordshire County Council elections were not provided for under the act.
Mr Hudspeth’s proposals would require approval from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.
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