Another in my mini-series (see here and here) of snippets from the Communities in Control White Paper that haven’t had the attention and debate that perhaps they should have had. This time, directly-elected Mayors:

We want to make it easier for people to demand that their local leaders move to establishing a directly-elected mayor through a referendum, so:
• we will consult on permitting on-line petitioning as well as traditional paper petitions to demonstrate support for a referendum
• we will consult on reducing the threshold for a petition to trigger a mayoral referendum from 5 per cent of voters –

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As I touched on in a previous post, there is much to debate in the Government’s Communities in Control White Paper published over the summer, even if Hazel Blears’ recent speech on the topic seemed to rather miss the opportunity.

Here’s another morsel:

We will give local authorities the power to provide incentives for voting in local government elections, for example by entering voters into a prize draw. Voting incentives should not be construed as ‘paying for votes’ or create a major new financial burden on councils. Instead, they should be viewed as an eye-catching method to increase awareness and engagement,

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The Government’s White Paper, Communities in Control was published over the summer and the subject in part of Hazel Blears’ recent (and, er…, rather controversial) speech. As this extract shows, there’s plenty to chew over in the proposals, despite Hazel Blears’ diversion into swipes at a pair of bloggers:

Among the voluntary organisations we want to help in different ways to build stronger communities, there is a particular role for faith based groups. Britain has a strong tradition of faith-based organisations working to improve local communities. This reflects the importance placed on charitable acts, social action and civic duty

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