LOCAL government is in crisis. The poor turnout at the local elections last Thursday, the quality of councillors, the persistent above-inflation increase in council tax, officer-led councils and lack of public accountability give the Government an excuse to press ahead with regional assembles.

It will be claimed that all these problems can be resolved by introducing this alien form of democracy into this country.

In truth it is likely to remove public accountability even further, create a stooge to national government and cost us more.

I believe the remedy to our problems lie in strengthening the existing system by scrapping the entire complaints procedures outside councils and introducing an administrative court cystem.

This could be attached to the County Court so anyone can seek satisfaction at a nominal fee if the council's complaints procedure has failed.

We also need a national complaints procedure for all councils, as well as fewer councillors. Instead, professional councillors should be elected at a reasonable salary and elections should be held every year for one-third of the councillors with a fallow year as is the system in many parts of the country already.

Local Government has become enormously complex and councillors need to be able to understand the system and have time to respond to community needs. It is therefore no longer reasonable to expect people to do this for nothing.

Bernard Borman,

Chairman,

Richmondshire & Hambleton

Branch, Democracy Movement,

PO Box 38, Leyburn DL8 5WX.

Updated: 09:28 Saturday, May 03, 2003