THERE are 47 of them in York – but how many could you name? No, I’m not talking pubs, snickelways or city-centre churches. I’m talking something much more dispensable – councillors.

Go on, give it a go. See how many you can name off the top of your head. If you don’t work for City of York Council or this newspaper, then I suspect you might struggle to hit double figures.

Which leads me, much more quickly than usual, to this week’s point: we don’t need them all.

Let’s look at the facts. York, like I say, has 47 councillors, along with a population of 200,000, give or take a few. That works out at 4,255 people per councillor – not that you’d ever have to queue all at once to have your say, of course.

Now let’s put that figure into context. Hull has 262,000 people and 59 councillors – that’s 4,441 people per politician. Sheffield has 87 councillors, serving 547,000 people – an average of 6,287 each. And Leeds has 99 councillors for 760,000 – an average of 7,677.

In short, York’s councillors represent far fewer people than their peers elsewhere in the region – drastically so compared with Leeds.

So why do we have them all? It’s clearly too many. I came to that conclusion during my three-year stint as The Press’s political reporter, when I spent much of my time reporting on the actions and inactions of myriad committees and sub-committees. But it’s become much more relevant in these economically-miserable times.

Yes, in an ideal situation, having plenty of politicians would be great. Seriously, it would. Some of our councillors, on all sides, do truly fantastic work, spurred on by a genuine love of the city, and having more of those people, each with smaller case-loads would be great for democracy. But this isn’t an ideal situation.

Instead, it’s an increasingly bleak one, in which the Government is cutting anything and everything it can, with bus services, social care, and jobs being axed left, far-right and centre. Last night, York’s politicians slogged it out for hours trying to agree a budget for next year, and there’s a very good chance that as you read this, they’re back at Guildhall trying for a second time. Whichever of the sides emerges “victorious”, the result will be pretty grim.

So surely, at a time when they’re wielding the axe, the councillors themselves shouldn’t be exempt? Surely, when organisations large and small across the city – including their own – are being slashed, the council should be reduced too, to protect vital services?

Parliament is doing it, with plans to reduce the number of MPs by 50. So too Selby District Council, where leader Mark Crane wants a reduction from 41 to 31. Hambleton is also looking for a reduction, and neighbouring Richmondshire is considering doing likewise.

York’s press office says there are no such plans here though. But why not?

By cutting just the least active, lowest-paid backbencher, the council could save about £7,500 a year, plus expenses. Cut two, and the saving is about £15,000 a year which – to put it in context – would be enough to negate the proposed increase in residents’ parking charges.

Cut ten and they’d save £75,000 a year – enough to avoid the reduction in street cleaners that has also been put forward. Or to invest in cycle training for children, rather than slashing it as proposed. Or to avoid cutting £59,000 of care from stroke victims. Or to at least help to protect any number of other services.

And surely that’s got to be preferable to keeping a disproportionately large number of party-political councillors on the public payroll.

Let some of them go, redraw the boundaries if need be, and let them prove that we really are all in this together, as we’re so often being told.