Letter: Keeping track of councillors' promises and failures is easy

Simple.

Just store the campaign leaflets issued over the last few weeks by the candidates who won the county, town or parish council seats in your ward in a file for March 2014.

At that time use the leaflets to create individual lists of the promises, policies and aspirations each made to get elected.

Send the appropriate list to each councillor, asking them to inform you within two weeks of the developments they have achieved for each item.

Keep those replies in another file dated for April 2017. Repeat sending the original list and request for updates in March 2015, 2016 and 2017, again storing all replies in the April 2017 file.

In April 2017, you use each group of four annual replies to compare and list the original claims against your understanding of what each councillor has actually managed to fulfil over the four years.

Then use that final list of comparisons to send a follow-up, congratulating them on the positives and/or requesting an explanation for the failures.

Your collection of comparisons will also identify those councillors who simply follow party political diktats.

Assuming you receive responses to your comments (or, more tellingly, if you don't) you will be able to judge how much you can believe the claims each councillor will be making to seek your vote for continuation as a councillor from May 2017 to May 2021.

On receipt of each reply over the four years, give yourself a treat for having contributed to local accountability.

And, to wrap it all up, copy your lists of comparisons and the responses you receive to the Shropshire Star so they can produce a collated review of the success or otherwise of the mandates for our elected REPRESENTATIVES.

A collaborative and educational contribution to local democracy.

Malcolm MacInytre-Read,

Much Wenlock