Thinking of Becoming a Councillor?

There's nothing special about County Councillors, we're just ordinary residents of the County like yourselves, but we care about what happens in the County and we try to make decisions that reflect your opinions. When I was about 30 there was an issue in the street I lived in and I tried to contact my local authority to get something done and unfortunately not a lot happened so I thought well, the best thing to do is do it myself. I was involved a little bit in student politics when I was down at university but I also kept involved with local politics when I came home and I thought well, there's a lot of people at these meetings that sometimes seem to complain about a lot of things but don't necessarily do anything about it. That was just as much councillors as members of the public. So I thought I'm young, I'm energetic, I'm passionate about my home town, why not try and influence things there? When I retired I found that I wanted to give something back to the community, to serve the community and to help the people that had voted for me. Your County Councillor has three roles: to represent you and the Division that voted for him or her, to lead the community, to be a voice in the community, and to make decisions within the County Council mechanisms on your behalf. You've got to be a good listener and I think that's why we're given two ears and one mouth, and we should use them in that proportion. That's the most important role of the Council; listening to local people and determining what their priorities are and acting on those priorities. I think you need to have a lot of patience, be dedicated, passionate about becoming involved with the community and just generally interested in local democracy and trying to make the community in which you live much better. One of the things you've got to be able to do is condense a lot of information about any particular service area in a reasonable amount of time, so you've got to have that analysing or that critical skill, to be the friendly critic of the County Council. If you work you need to have an understanding employer. I work as a teaching assistant. I work full time or a normal school day and the school are extremely kind and I give them the timetable of County Council meetings, ask if I'm OK to have that time off and try and work out whether I would have the full day or just a couple of hours to go to a meeting and come back. I'm actually working at Fleetwood Nautical College, lecturing about two to two and a half days a week and the rest of my time is spent as a County Councillor. When you're a Councillor most days are very busy. If I'm at Preston at the County Hall it's for Committee purposes and also to work with my group. I also have quite a lot of activities within the Borough because I'm also a Ward Councillor. I attend Parish meetings and when it comes to the weekend it gives me an opportunity to catch up on a lot of the casework which I've picked up during the week. I probably attend about three or four meetings a day at least. I answer letters, I receive probably about 60 or 70 emails a day so I've got to respond to most of those. I hold surgeries in the local library, there's usually at least one community meeting a week going on that you can go to and find out information and get things done for members of the public. There are some myths about us and what you need to be a Councillor but you don't need to be anything in particular you just need to care about what happens in your area and want to influence how services are provided. When I first got on the Council I was only 23, I thought perhaps I was going to be on my own or slightly isolated because of my age but that's not the case at all. You meet some absolutely incredible people, you get a massive opportunity to try and change where you live and you'll get an incredible chance to do some things that perhaps you probably never thought you'd be able to do in your entire life. When I was first elected to the County Council I had an officer that I could go to all the time and if I had any issues, didn't know where to go, didn't know who to ask, didn't know which officer to get involved with a certain issue, I can go to him and he would actually tell me how to do things. If you've got a weakness in a certain area, maybe public speaking, maybe how to write a speech, how to do a press release, how to use a computer, how to use email, there is help, advice and support on that so don't ever be put off standing for Council because you can't send an email. If I can help put forward people's views and act as a voice for them that gives me a great deal of pleasure. When I get home you know, on my answer machine, I usually see there's someone left me a message and it's never anyone ringing me up to say "Tim, you've done a great job today". It's usually a complaint about something but if I can solve that problem for that individual, then I've done a good job. You take the rough with the smooth but overall it is the most rewarding thing you can do.