THE local elections to be held in Scotland on Thursday will see 1227 councillors returned.
The balance of power across the local authorities is likely to vary wildly. In 2017, not one of Scotland’s 32 councils saw a single party take enough seats to command a majority.
But with so much uncertainty about who will wield power, a key question for voters remains: who is representing me?
How many councillors represent me?
Most of Scotland’s council wards elect either three and four councillors. A few now elect five. These are your most local democratic representatives on the local authority.
The councillors from one ward are likely to be from different parties. Due to the nature of the single transferable vote system, one party winning every seat in a ward is essentially unheard of.
As such, you will have a choice of different representatives from different parties (or possibly an independent) when looking to get in touch with your local councillor.
It could also be argued that every councillor in a local authority represents everybody in that entire region. This will certainly be the view of opposition parties when they claim to speak for “everyone in Edinburgh”, for example, when criticising the ruling administration.
If you take this view, then the number of councillors that represent you varies widely. Glasgow has 85 councillors, while Clackmannanshire has just 18.
To know the exact number of councillors who represent you, it is necessary to know exactly which council and which ward you are in.
What is a council ward?
A council’s wards are the areas into which the local authority is subdivided.
Scotland’s 32 local authorities have a total of 354 wards. The largest, Glasgow City Council, has 23 different wards. The smallest, Clackmannanshire and East Renfrewshire, each have just five.
A ward’s size and population can vary hugely. While just 2600 people live in the North Isles ward of Shetland’s council, Edinburgh’s Almond ward has a population of around 36,000.
Some wards are massive, like the almost 5000-square-kilometre North, West and Central Sutherland on Highland council. Others are much smaller, like Aberdeen’s Hilton/Woodside/Stockethill which covers just 2.6 square kilometres.
What council ward am I in?
If you are unsure of what ward you are in, you can find it by entering your postcode into the boundaries.scot website here.
Each ward elects either three or four councillors using the single transferable vote system.
Once you know your ward, you will be able to find out the names of your councillors and which party, if any, they represent through your local authority’s website.
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