10,000 to debate your petition - ridiculous!

7.09.12pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 18th May 2010

New rules which would allow people signing petitions to be heard more clearly at county hall have been weighted to make it almost impossible for most communities to reach the threshold for signatures.

The Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 provides for petitions to be debated at a full council meeting, providing a certain threshold was reached. Currently petitions are merely presented to the council and often no further action or debate takes place.

Government guidance says that a suitable threshold is 1% of the electorate - roughly 10,000 for a county as large as Hertfordshire.

Liberal Democrats today pointed out that this would mean that most petitions would still only get a token hearing. Lib Dem Leader Chris White said: 'Very large communities like St Albans and Watford might just be able to hit a target like this in exceptional circumstances. But even some of the largest petitions ever seen by the county council have fallen well short of 10,000.

'Most of course are on local issues: the closure of a school or a library or problems with a major road, affecting one or two electoral divisions. Most of our towns and all of our villages would struggle to reach 10,000: after all a typical county councillor's electoral division itself comprises 10,000 voters.

'So in all but the most unusual cases it might take every single elector in a division to sign a petition before the county council deigned to debate the issue causing concern.

'To set the limit at 10,000 is a deeply cynical move designed to stifle the current huge protests about the lack of school places. Our proposal for there to be just 1,000 signatures was defeated by a Tory block vote.'