Swindon Borough Councillor attendance rates 2009

Councillors’ attendance rates continued to improve in 2009. This is the third year I’ve trawled through the record of meeting attendance for Swindon Borough Councillors. It’s pleasing to see an upward trend. On average across all councillors the attendance rate was 85% in 2009, up from 80% in 2008 and 77% in 2007.

In terms of attendance rates, the top five councillors of 2009 were:

• Mr Montaut: 26 meetings out of 26 – 100%
• Mr Morton: 20 meetings out of 20 – 100%
• Mr Ford: 12 meetings out of 12 – 100%
• Mr Perkins: 35 meetings out of 36 – 97%
• Mr Short: 31 meetings out of 32 – 97%

Another 22 councillors attended over 90% of the meetings they were recorded against, a big improvement on last year. Three of these attended over 50 recorded meetings during the year.

The councillors with the worst attendance rates in 2009 were:

• Mr Fanning: 24 meetings out of 39 – 62%
• Mr Holland: 20 meetings out of 33 – 61%
• Mr Wiltshire: 17 meetings out of 29 – 59%
• Mr Dobie: 5 meetings out of 9 – 56%
• Mr Sammels: 5 meetings out of 11 – 45%

There has been some improvement in the low-attendance tail. In 2008, 5 councillors in post at the year end had attendance rates of 60% or less and another 6 had rates of 70% or less. In 2009, that improved to just 3 attending 60% or less of their meetings and another 7 attending 70% or less. In 2009, for the first time in three years, no councillor attended less than 40% of their recorded meetings, though Mr Sammels’ previously good attendance record has taken a tumble and is now well adrift from others.

The figures are derived by taking an entry in a meeting attendance page of ‘Present’ or ‘In attendance’ as meaning the councillor was there, and any other entry as meaning that they should have been there but weren’t. Full details of all Swindon Borough Councillors’ 2009 meeting attendance rates are available in the archive.