Cuppa & Cake with Councillors

At NH&S we believe that the more you support a community to get involved in doing things and making decisions together, the more they become interested in representative democracy. In ensuring its accountability to the local community that is.  We’re beginning to notice this.

This is one of the areas we are keeping our eye on locally.

We’ve already seen people register to vote in order to have a say on protecting a local asset of community value, and we are seeing people who haven’t voted for years, take up the offer of support from a local primary school, for voter ID ready for the 5th May.

‘i’ve not voted for over 10 years, but I’m going to vote this time.’

Through the local social spaces we’ve also been able to have big chats about voting intentions.  And some people who have been saying, ‘I’m voting for UKIP if they are on the card, are beginning to wonder if that might be the best option.

We’ve organised cuppa and cake with all the local councillors that are standing and we’ll be interested to see how that goes.

Usually, voting in our local ward is between 25-27%, and we expect that will take a dip this year, due to voter ID, but will it dip as much as other wards in the borough, that’s one to watch.

We’re also interested in what happens with voting when you shift from political party to political education…with resource that aims to convene rather than influence the space?