The Conservative Group on Maidstone Borough Council has moved swiftly to exercise its new power after winning an overall majority in the local elections at the start of the month.

The Tories' leader, Cllr David Burton, was elected as the new leader of the council at yesterday's (Saturday's) annual meeting of the council. With the humbled opposition parties not even putting forward a candidate, he was, as one councillor put it, "anointed not appointed."

Cllr Burton replaces Lib Dem Cllr Martin Cox.

Conservative Cllr Jonathan Purle was appointed as his deputy leader - again unopposed.

With 29 seats of the 55-seat council, the Conservatives were able to ensure everything went their way.

In a major change of direction, in a motion proposed by Cllr Purle, the meeting voted "in principle" to revert to an executive style of leadership from May next year instead of the current committee system.

It means the council will be lead by a small cabinet, with backbench councillors left only to scrutinise their decisions.

The exact system is not yet determined. The matter was referred to the Democracy and General Purposes Committee to work out the details over the next 12 months.

In the meantime the council will continue to be run by nine committees, but that will not worry the Conservatives too much as they now have a one-member majority on every committee.

In addition Cllr Burton proposed a change to the council's constitution. Previously there was a rule that no one party could hold both the chairman and vice-chairman positions on a committee. That has now gone, with Cllr Burton saying it would give better scope to chose the best person for the job.

In a final change of direction, in a motion proposed by Cllr John Perry (Con) the council agreed to instruct officers to produce a report on a switch to whole council elections, once every four years, instead of elections by thirds.

The Conservative group has pushed for such a switch several times before but has always been defeated because such a change requires a 2/3rds majority under the constitution.

Cllr Paul Harper, the Labour leader, opposed the move, and warned it would be a waste of time because of the 2/3rds rule. But he may be being over-confident.

The Conservatives would only need to convince eight opposition members to agree to the change to win the vote, but Cllr Perry said the reason he was proposing the change was that the Local Government Boundary Commission was currently carrying out a review of ward boundaries.

If Maidstone didn't switch to full council elections, it was very likely that the commission would reorganise every ward into a three-member constituency, so that no ward voted more often than others.

It is thought that a number of councillors currently in one or two-person wards would be opposed to the loss of identity for their communities if they were merged into a larger area and so might support full council elections which would enable single-seat wards to be retained.

The council's annual meeting was very different this year and was held in the Exhibition Hall at the Kent County Showground instead of the Town Hall Council Chamber. The reason was so that a proper degree of social distancing could be achieved with each councillor sitting at an individual desk removed from his colleagues.

Before the political business of the day, the meeting began in a much more sociable way, with councillors lining up to sing the praises of the newly elected Mayor of Maidstone, Cllr Fay Gooch (Ind), and to thank the outgoing Mayor Cllr Marion Ring for her sterling work.

Because of the Covid crisis, Cllr Ring had served as Mayor for two years and so is to become the only woman to have her name etched twice on the council chamber's board of honour.

Cllr Derek Mortimer (Lib Dem) was elected as Deputy Mayor.

As is the custom, the new Mayor also received tributes from the "scholars" of the town, with an address from Samuel Luxton, a student from Maidstone Grammar School, from Anna Soan from Maidstone Grammar School for Girls and from Ruby Symington, a pupil from Cllr Gooch's local primary school in Barming.

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