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Leicester Shire & Rutland Improvement Partnership

Member Development

Councillor to Councillor

Balancing our political and constituency roles

The LRIP Member Development Programme is all about developing members’ skills and who better to learn from than each other.

So in this section a number of experienced councillors from across the Partnership give you the benefit of their time in office with a range of anecdotes and helpful advice on some key topics.

Their advice is in the form of video clips so we recommend you view the videos when using a broadband connection. For each topic, a text file is available to read if you can’t access the video clips.

Video Transcript

Some people tend to take a very political stance, and make each issue and political issue.

I think sometime when you belong to a political party and when you’re working in a small council that you have to try and marry the party line along with what the local electorate want.

People sometimes think that just because you’re a Labour Councillor or liberal Democrat or you’re a Tory that you’re not interested in the views of people who don’t have you political persuasion. But that’s actually a nonsense- once you’re elected your elected to represent everybody in your ward.

When I knock on doors, people say to me, oh I’m going to vote for you- I won’t vote for your party nationally but I’ll vote for you, because I know you.

People I pretty clear that I was elected as party political politicians but that doesn’t mean in any way that it takes away my care for the area.

Party politics I think is part of the picture, but I would feel a small part of the picture.

Topics

Click on the links below to watch the videos: