Recommendations for councillor numbers and wards submitted to Scottish Ministers

28th May 2016

Recommendations include.-

Highland council Reduced by 6 councillors including 2 in Caithness.
Caithness to go from 3 wards to 2 and from 10 councillors down to 8.
The new Caithness wards would be East Caithness and West Caithness.

The Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland has submitted its recommendations on councillor numbers and wards for each of Scotland's 32 council areas to Scottish Ministers.

These recommendations arise from the 5th Reviews of Local Government Electoral Arrangements which began in February 2014.

The recommendations provide for 351 wards and 1219 councillors across Scotland, an overall decrease of 2 wards and 4 councillors relative to existing arrangements. Under the recommendations, representation of the electorate within council areas will be more evenly shared between councillors and across Scotland there will be greater equity in electoral representation.

Ronnie Hinds, Chair of the Commission, said: "Today we have submitted to Scottish Ministers our recommendations for electoral arrangements which we believe are in the interests of effective and convenient local government across Scotland. These recommendations set out the number of councillors for each council area and the boundaries of the wards they will represent.

We are grateful to councils and to the public who responded to our consultations over the last two years. Their input has been invaluable in shaping our proposals and while we must take account of our obligations under the legislation and
consider the interests of the whole council area, we have been able to take on board many of the views expressed.
The legislation which governs our reviews places equality of representation at the heart of what we do and we have delivered a set of recommendations that significantly improves electoral parity across Scotland and so provides for fairer
local democracy and more effective local government ."

Scottish Ministers are responsible for implementing the Final Recommendations. They can implement our recommendations with or without modification, decide not to implement them, or ask us to undertake another review of the area involved. Ministers' consideration is governed by the same legislative rules (Schedule 6 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973) as applies to the Commission. We have scheduled these reviews so that our recommendations are capable of being implemented in time for the local government elections in May 2017.

Any comments on the reports and their recommendations should be submitted by 7 July 2016 to: Tony Romain, Scottish Government, Local Government Policy and Relationship Unit, Directorate for Local Government and Communities, Area 3J, Victoria Quay, Edinburgh EH6 6QQ.

A summary of the recommendations for each council area is contained in the appendix to this release. Full reports and background papers for each council area are available on our website: www.lgbc-scotland.gov.uk

The full list of changes for all the wards in Scotland can be found at -
http://www.lgbc-scotland.gov.uk/reviews/5th_electoral/01_resources/News_release_260516.pdf