Signing in

There’s a lot of paperwork involved in becoming a council candidate which I took to County Hall to be handed in – and checked. This had to be done by appointment. With parish and town council elections as well as the county taking place on May 2nd there’s thousands of candidates whose papers have to be checked and processed.

The most important bit is the nomination paper: to stand as a candidate you have to get a proposer and seconder and then 8 more people to “assent” to your standing  (note: “assent” doesn’t mean they support you, it just means they don’t mind you standing. So you can’t even count on ten votes before you start). There’s no scope for error: all ten have to be registered to vote in your division and you have to get names and numbers exactly right.

There’s a two week window, which ends on April 5^th, for nominations to be checked and then on Tuesday 9^th April the list of candidates will be published.  So far I’m the only one who’s gone public in the Bamburgh Division so it will be interesting to see who I’m standing against.

There’s a number of people standing down from the various parish councils in Bamburgh Division: parish councils have an increasingly important role to play in the good running of our neighbourhood so I’d encourage people to think about standing. Information is here..