6th May 2010 - there is a Council Election as well!

Just how well have you been represented during the last 4 years? Well, of course, attendance at Council and Committee Meetings is not everything but perhaps for £10,000 a year - yes all councillors now get at least £10,000 a year - you should be able to count on a reasonable record.

After all it is the case that if you are not there then you can't do much, can you? So what does the record show for last year, 2009?

Of 60 councillors the 15 with the lowest attendance record are ALL Conservative councillors! Three Tory councillors Paul Reeve (4), Marc Hope (4) and Penny Bradford (7) have made a total of 15 appearances for their £30,000 of salaries. Yes, that is £2,000 per evening attendance! At the top end of the scale the 3 most assiduous attenders, two of whom are Labour, clocked up 93 attendances.

And as for ward teams well it is very notable that the worst represented wards in the Borough, by far, are Roehampton and Queenstown. Roehampton's Bradford and Scott Caisley are both in the lowest attending 7 of 60 councillors and all 3 of the Queenstown councillors are in the bottom half of the attendance tables. No other ward gets anywhere near the shameless record of these 6 Tory councillors.

Whatever your politics surely Roehampton and Queenstown deserve better than that? They are after all two of the three most deprived areas in the Borough - according to official Council stats.

N.B. These figures are taken from the official minutes held on the Council's website for Committee and Council meetings. They exclude party meetings, surgeries, etc. I have also excluded Cabinet members, who appear to have a low attendance record but are not officially members of committees.