Mayoral Referendum – Deadline For New Voter Registration Is September 27

Published on: 26 Sep, 2016
Updated on: 27 Sep, 2016

Guildford Borough Council is reminding people that if they are not registered voters they need to be by Tuesday, September 27, if they wish to vote in the directly mayor referendum on Thursday, October 13.

The referendum is to ask residents whether Guildford Borough Council should continue to be run by a leader or change to a directly elected mayor.

If you’re not already registered in the borough, you can register online at www.gov.uk/register-to-vote.

Or you can email the council’s electoral services team electoralservices@guildford.gov.uk or call 01483 444115 to request a voter registration form.

In April 2016 the council received a valid petition calling for a referendum. A referendum is a vote – but instead of voting for a candidate in an election – you are asked a question.

Your ballot paper will ask how you would like the council to be run. Either by a leader who is an elected councillor chosen by a vote of the other elected councillors – which is how the council is run now.

Or by a mayor who is elected by voters – which would be a change from how the council is run now.

The wording on the ballot paper is set by Government regulations.

If the majority of voters are in favour of changing to a directly elected mayor, the council will hold the first mayoral election on May 4, 2017

If voters prefer to retain the current leader and cabinet system, the council will continue with that system.

You can find further information on the council’s website: www.guildford.gov.uk/mayoralreferendum including the key similarities and differences between the current leader and cabinet model and a directly elected mayor and cabinet model.

Responses to Mayoral Referendum – Deadline For New Voter Registration Is September 27

Susan Parker Reply

September 27, 2016 at 10:04 pm

This scheme is not designed to protect our countryside or town, or give a voice to the people. Instead, it will give enormous individual powers to an elected mayor, whose ability to change the borough would be almost uncontrolled.

What isn’t made clear in the council summary, and perhaps what voters should know in forming their view, is that the promoter of this petition for the referendum is Monika Juneja, a former councillor.

She was, when deputy leader and lead councillor for planning, a main architect of the original version of our current Local Plan. There may be those who dislike the Local Plan and so blame the current Executive, but the current plan is largely following the original scheme as set out by the promoter of this referendum.

Ms Juneja stood down from the council because she was charged and convicted at the Old Bailey with various matters including forgery, for which she received a suspended sentence.

We are opposed to this proposal, like all the councillors in other parties, because concentrating power in the hands of one individual seems to us to be inherently undemocratic. This system has potential for such concentrated power to be abused.

(Susan Parker is party leader of Guildford Greenbelt Group)
Jules Cranwell Reply

September 27, 2016 at 10:37 pm

There’s an awful lot that is rotten about the current system, and those in charge. We cannot trust them on the green belt, given their promise to protect it, and their disastrous local plan.

However, an elected mayor, given the likely candidates would be even worse, so we are stuck with a choice of the lesser of two evils.

We can chuck out the present lot in three years, but could not revert from the elected mayor system for 12 years.

Please get out and vote!
Ben Paton Reply

September 28, 2016 at 7:00 am

Perfectly summed up by Angela Gunning: ‘shameless hubris’.

Mansbridge and Juneja are the Conservative Corbynistas.