LETTER by William Sunnucks, councillor for Rural North Ward

I’m delighted that Colchester Council has decided to have a proper look at abandoning yearly council elections in favour of a four-year cycle.

This will be a major step towards improving the effectiveness of the council. The present system forces councillors to give too much time to political campaigning and too little to the serious business of running the council.

The counter argument is for more democracy - some say we need councillors to be accountable to the public annually, otherwise they will get lazy.

But this is a formula for shorttermism.

The council’s key tasks require more than one year to implement.

We need to elect local leaders and give them time to learn the job properly and deliver.

There will be a decision in February next year.

If we make the change, it will take time to implement and we can’t predict which parties will benefit - the process will rightly be controlled by the Electoral Commission.

We will then be starting to align ourselves with the vast majority of councils nationwide and have a better chance of stable, experienced and competent administration.

Good news before Christmas.