As well as having the ballot boxes out for the election of Eastleigh constituency’s Member of Parliament, Thursday 6 May will also see voting take place for borough councillors in Hedge End’s three wards – Grange Park, St Johns and Wildern.

Eastleigh has 44 councillors representing the 19 wards within the borough, with seven in Hedge End – two each in Grange Park and Wildern and three in St Johns, and currently all Liberal Democrat.

 Borough councillors are responsible for the running of local services such as rubbish collections and leisure facilities. They also agree budgets and, perhaps most crucially for residents, Council Tax charges.

Also known as Members, they sit for four years with elections held in the borough on three out of the four years, electing one-third of the councillors on each occasion.

The candidates standing this year in Hedge End include two councillors elected in 2006 – Louise Bloom (Grange Park) and Keith House (Wildern) – and with Julie Skinner as the third elected in 2006 standing down in St Johns ward.

All three wards have candidates from the Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem and UKIP parties standing. For a full list of the candidates see the Eastleigh Borough Council website.

Borough councillors meet as the Full Council every eight weeks. Each year they elect a Leader (currently Keith House), a Cabinet and committees to oversee various areas of work.

The Council’s website says that the ‘overriding duty of Councillors is to the whole community, but they have a special duty to their constituents’.  

So with the proposal to use Greta Park as an overflow car-parking area for the Rose Bowl causing great debate within Hedge End at the moment – see Hedgeendpeople story ‘Test match parking proposal in Greta Park and Turnpike Way playing fields’ – it would be particularly interesting to hear the candidates’ views on the subject, particularly those wanting to represent Wildern ward: Keith House (Lib Dem) and who has posted a comment on the website story; Christine McKeone (Labour); Michale O’Donoghue (UKIP); and Paul Redding (Conservative)

Currently the borough has 37 Lib Dem, five Conservative and two Labour councillors. Results of the borough elections held in 2006, 2007 and 2008 (no borough elections were held in 2009 in Eastleigh) and with details of the numbers of votes cast for each candidate can also be found on the Eastleigh Borough website.

Two weeks and three days to go until Election Day – but while the general election votes will be counted after the polls close at 10.00pm on the day, we’ll have to wait a little longer for the results of the borough election as counting won’t start until 10.30am on Friday 7 May and is expected to finish at about 1.00pm.