Being a councillor is not a position for which there is a great deal of competition.The status and standing of the councillor is low and the time de manded of a councillor, for modest allowances and minimal expenses, mean for many people it is a position incompatible with a career and family demands.the formal virtues of directly elected representatives are not delivered in practice and in the context of the experience of the rise of broader non-electice governance arrangement it is not clear that councillors as a body ensure that public bodies are more responsive. There are many dedicated and talented councillors, the Government would be quick to cocede, but there are doubts about precisely what is the "value-added"of councillors.
A second set of problems identified by the new Labour Government revolves around the indifference of the public to lical politics.Election attractlittle public interest and the decision-making structures of local government are inadequate and invisible to the public.The Government's White Paper on Modern Local Government argues: