Tag: councillor attendance

After a couple of years of improvement, attendance rates of councillors at Swindon Borough Council meetings stagnated in 2010. On average, across all councillors the attendance rate was 84%, which is not a significant change from 2009 when the rate was 85%.

In terms of attendance rates, the top 5 councillors of 2010 were:

• Mr Heenan: 35 meetings out of 35 – 100%
• Mr Montaut: 28 meetings out of 28 – 100%
• Mr Tomlinson: 11 meetings out of 11 – 100%
• Mr Parry: 45 meetings out of 46 – 98%
• Mr Wright: 32 meetings out of 33 – 97%

Another 16 councillors attended over 90% of the meetings they were recorded against, a decrease from 22 who were in that position in 2009. Three councillors attended over 50 meetings during the year, including two of those with attendance rates above 90%.

The councillors with the worst attendance rates (60% or less) in 2010 were:

• Mr Wiltshire: 16 meetings out of 27 – 59%
• Ms Heenan: 14 meetings out of 24 – 58%
• Mr Smith: 10 meetings out of 20 – 50%
• Mr Cherry: 3 meetings out of 7 – 43%
• Mr Dobie: 5 meetings out of 12 – 42%
• Mr Fanning: 5 meetings out of 14 – 36%
• Mr Sammels: 1 meeting out of 5 – 20%

Of those, three ceased to be councillors last May, whilst Mr Dobie, Mr Smith and Mr Wiltshire are saving themselves from having to explain their poor attendance by not seeking re-election at the elections later this week — consistent poor attendance since they were last elected in the cases of Mr Dobie and Mr Wiltshire. That leaves Ms Heenan, elected only in May 2010, who clearly has a lot to learn about attendance at council meetings from her son Mr Heenan. Compared with 2009, although the number of councillors not attending many of their meetings is little changed, for those councillors in this group their individual attendance rates have got far worse.

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’ 2010 meeting attendance rates are available in the archive.

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.

In a similar way that I did for last year, I’ve trawled through the record of meeting attendance for Swindon Borough Councillors during 2008. Taking an entry in the attendance page of ‘Present’ or ‘In attendance’ as meaning they were there, and any other entry as meaning that they should have been there but weren’t, I get some interesting results. Note that I have considered all meetings for which councillor attendance is listed on the council’s website, except for one committee. That exception is the Wiltshire & Swindon Joint Police Committee for which there is no attendance record for most meetings and, for the couple where there are, the record does not appear to be reliable.

At the moment, the information for five meetings is not available. This will be added when the information becomes available and if appropriate the figures and lists below will be updated.

In terms of attendance rates, the top five councillors of 2008 were:

• Ms Tomlinson: 31 meetings out of 31 – 100%
• Mr Tomlinson: 19 meetings out of 19 – 100%
• Mr Parry: 16 meetings out of 16 – 100%
• Mr Montaut: 9 meetings out of 9 – 100%
• Mr Cherry: 9 meetings out of 9 – 100%

Two councillors that stood down in May, Mr Lister and Mr Barnes, also attained a 100% record in 2008, tho’ for only three meetings. Another 10 councillors attended over 90% of the meetings they are recorded against.

The councillors with the worst attendance rates in 2008 (60% or less) were:

• Mr Edwards: 18 meetings out of 30 – 60%
• Mr Baker: 12 meetings out of 20 – 60%
• Ms Duff: 13 meetings out of 22 – 59%
• Ms Martin: 7 meetings out of 13 – 54%
• Mr Sharp: 2 meetings out of 4 – 50%
• Mr Wiltshire: 10 meetings out of 27 – 37%
• Mr James: 2 meetings out of 8 – 25%
• Mr Thompson: 0 meetings out of 3 – 0%

Of these, Messrs James, Sharp and Thompson are no longer councillors. Of those that are still councillors, Mr Wiltshire’s record stands out as being particularly poor.

The overall attendance rate in 2008 (80%) was slightly better than in 2007 (77%). Full details of all the Swindon Borough Councillors’ 2008 meeting attendances are available in the archive.

Update, 17 January 2009: The figures above have now been updated. Attendance records for two meetings remain unavailable.

Update, 15 February 2009: The records are now complete. The full data is available in comma delimited text (csv), OpenOffice and Excel format files.

Yesterday, the Adver reported on a week in the life of three councillors: Messrs Tomlinson, Pajak and Montaut. All three seem keen to stress how much more there is to their public service than attending council meetings. I wouldn’t deny that. But all three of these councillors have had quite good attendance rates at meetings. It comes as no surprise that they are as diligent when away from the council offices.

What would be more interesting is to see the diaries of Messrs Wiltshire, Dobie and Baker. Do they make up for their poor attendance at council meetings with their other councillor duties, or do they put in a matching performance?

In February, I reported, both here and on the TalkSwindon forum, councillors’ attendance rates for 2007. Today, the Adver has finally caught up. They’re only three months late!

Prompted by Mr Thompson’s antics, I’ve been trawling through the record of meeting attendance for Swindon Borough Councillors during 2007. Taking an entry in the attendance page of ‘Present’ or ‘In attendance’ as meaning they were there, and any other entry as meaning that they should have been there but weren’t, I get some interesting results. Note that I have considered all meetings for which councillor attendance is listed on the council’s website: some of these committees are described as ‘independent’, but presumably are closely related to the council’s business otherwise why would they be listed?

In terms of attendance rates, the top five councillors of 2007 were:

• Mr Montaut: 7 meetings out of 7 – 100%
• Mr Holland: 29 meetings out of 30 – 97%
• Mr Moffatt: 44 meetings out of 46 – 96%
• Mr Tomlinson: 22 meetings out of 23 – 96%
• Mr Shaw: 38 meetings out of 40 – 95%

Another 15 councillors attended over 90% of the meetings they are recorded against. The five councillors with the worst attendance rates were:

• Mr Short: 12 meetings out of 27 – 44%
• Mr Baker: 7 meetings out of 20 – 35%
• Mr Thompson: 8 meetings out of 24 – 33%
• Mr Dobie: 5 meetings out of 15 – 33%
• Mr Wiltshire: 9 meetings out of 38 – 24%

Two other councillors had attendance levels of less than 50%, one of whom stood down at the last elections.

The full set of data on which this analysis was based, including links to the meeting attendance records, is available as a comma delimited text file. Please mention komadori’s green corner when referring to this data.
Update, Sunday 24 Februrary 2008: OpenOffice and Excel files of the full data now uploaded.
Update, Wednesday 5 March 2008: Data now published as pages on my website. There’s also a lively discussion going on the TalkSwindon forum.