Derry City Council
Template:NI district Derry City Council (Irish: Comhairle Chathair Dhoire) is a district council in County Londonderry in Northern Ireland. The headquarters of the council is in the city of Derry on Lough Foyle. The Council employs about 550 people providing services to a population of about 105,000.
Council elections, since 1973 conducted by a system of Single Transferable Vote, are held every four years. Each year, in June, at the Council's Annual Meeting, the Councillors elect a Mayor and a Deputy Mayor.
The Derry City Council area consists of 5 electoral areas: Cityside, Northland, Rural, Shantallow and Waterside. In 2005, the voters of Derry elected 30 members as follows: 14 Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), 10 Sinn Féin, 5 Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), 1 Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). The current Mayor is SDLP Councillor Helen Quigley.
It took its present name in 1984; it was known as Londonderry City Council from 1973 until 1984. Between 1969 and 1973 Londonderry County Borough (covering the city of Londonderry) and Londonderry Rural District (covering the rural area around Londonderry, roughly corresponding to the Barony of Tirkeeran) were administered by the unelected Londonderry Development Commission with the aim of creating a "new town".
2005 Election results
| Party | seats | change +/- | |
|---|---|---|---|
| style="background-color: Template:Social Democratic and Labour Party/meta/color" |• | Social Democratic and Labour Party | 14 | = |
| style="background-color: Template:Sinn Féin/meta/color" |• | Sinn Féin | 10 | = |
| style="background-color: Template:Democratic Unionist Party/meta/color" |• | Democratic Unionist Party | 5 | +1 |
| style="background-color: Template:Ulster Unionist Party/meta/color" |• | Ulster Unionist Party | 1 | -1 |
Local politics
Prior to 1969, elections to the Londonderry county borough council were based on block voting. The electoral wards had been drawn and redrawn to ensure a unionist majority on the council even though more voters supported nationalist and republican parties. With local government reorganisation in Northern Ireland in 1973, the old county borough was merged with the surrounding Londonderry Rural District to form the new local government district of Londonderry. In addition, a system of STV was introduced which has resulted in a majority of councillors from nationalist and republican parties being elected, with the SDLP consistently being the largest party. Curiously, in 1973 (although not in later years) this was despite the fact that unionists (who had an electoral pact in that year) and the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland won a majority of votes between them. This was in part because the strong nationalist majority within the old county borough area was diluted by the narrow unionist majority within the surrounding rural district, combined with an unexpected effect of STV.
The Derry/Londonderry name dispute affected the council, notably in 1984 when it decided to rename itself from Londonderry City Council to Derry City Council; this was purely a name change and its powers remained that of a district council. At the same time it changed the name of the municipally owned airport from Londonderry Eglinton Airport to City of Derry Airport. At that time it did not seek to change the name of the city from Londonderry in its charter, possibly because to do so would require approval from London. This led to a temporary Unionist boycott of the council which was broken by two UUP councillors, Jim Guy and David Davis. They were expelled from their party for this but successfully contested the subsequent elections as Independent Unionists. Unionists also called for the establishment of a separate "Waterside" council covering the East bank and rural areas, however this was rejected by the local government boundary commission in 1991. In 1993, David Davis lost his seat with the result that there were no Unionist councillors on the West Bank area and in 2005 for the first time, no Unionist or Independent Unionist stood on the West Bank.
In order to avoid controversy, the parliamentary constituency for the district (which has had coterminous boundaries since 1997) is called Foyle. The Foyle MP is the current SDLP (the second largest Nationalist party in Northern Ireland) leader, Mark Durkan. The Assembly constituency is also named Foyle. In 2003, the constituency's voters elected 1 DUP, 3 SDLP and 2 Sinn Féin members of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Durkan won the seat with a total of 21 119 votes [46.3% of the vote].
Proposed boundary changes for future parliamentary/assembly elections would transfer two wards in the east of the district from the Foyle constituency to the East Londonderry constituency, whose current MP is the DUP's Gregory Campbell. While these wards have a Catholic majority according to the 2001 Census, they are less Catholic than the rest of the city while being more Catholic than the average for East Londonderry. The net effect of the transfer is likely to be to increase the nationalist percentage of the electorate in both constituencies. This minor transfer is unlikely to have a partisan effect on either constituency in Westminster or Northern Ireland Assembly elections. [1]
There were few comments on the changes in written representations and the changes remained in the Boundary Commission's revised recommendations. It is therefore likely that they will become final recommendations. These will not affect the boundaries of the City Council.
Derry/Londonderry also has a Shadow Council. This is made up from 16-22 year olds elected from geographical areas in the city, as well as interest, political groups and also GLBT community groups. The Shadow Council work in unison with DCC (Derry City Council) to lend a voice to the young generation of Foyle, who make up a large percentage of the population. The Shadow Council elect a Junior Mayor as their representative to the media and public. The current junior mayor is Shadow Councillor Emmet Doyle, with Kerri Anderson as deputy. Derry City Shadow Council is hailed[citation needed] as being a model throughout Northern Ireland with other areas taking up the idea following their example.
See also
References
- Cited References
- ^ "The 2004 Boundary Commission: Provisional recommendations". Northern Ireland Elections.