Hopwood Hall Councillors must make own Township decision

Councillor Susan Emmott is one of three Hopwood Hall Councillors that must decide which township she will vote on.

Councillors in the Hopwood Hall ward must decide for themselves whether they will sit on the Heywood or Middleton townships.

Traditionally the three Hopwood Hall Councillors have sat on both Townships but last month they were told that two of them would sit on the Heywood Township and one on Middleton Township.

The Council had proposed that Hopwood Hall residents should vote for which Councillors they wanted to sit on which Township, at a cost of more than £6,000 to the tax payer, but that recommendation was thrown out at a Regulatory Committee meeting last week.

Now the Labour Councillors Susan Emmott, Linda Robinson and Carol Wardle must decide for themselves which Townships they sit on; a move which has angered the three of them.

Councillor Emmott said: "There has never been an option to maintain the status quo, where all three of us remain on both townships. We have each been elected in the ward since 2004 and have been re-elected. If residents had any quarrel with us sitting on both townships they would have turfed us out by now."

Councillor Greg Couzens, sitting on the Regulatory Committee, said that the issue had gone on for far too long. "I can not get my head round it," he said. "This has been dragged out and dragged out. We have already decided that the three Councillors can not sit on two townships and having a referendum on this will cost taxpayers money. I strongly oppose squandering money just because the Councillors can not decide for themselves."

The controversy surrounding the decision is sure to continue after it was passed by the narrowest of margins at the Regulatory Committee, with the five Liberal Democrat Councillors on the committee voting down their four opponents.