Cabinet shakers

The personalities who run the council could be directly elected by the people of York, leading to more lively local elections, under proposals being considered.

It is part of a long-term plan to brighten up local democracy and call time on stuffy council meetings.

One of the key ideas being bounced around at the city council is to have a leadership made up of a cabinet of chief councillors, each responsible for a different area of services. And council bosses want them to become familiar to the people of York.

The idea is to help bring an end to the perception that council committee meetings are run by droning councillors waffling endlessly in smoke-filled rooms.

The council's chief executive, David Clark, said the authority was currently developing exciting ideas, though they would not be implemented until other councils had experimented with changing their structures first.

But he said change was inevitable: "The current committee system is wrong. It's very difficult for people to work out who is in charge of it. For example, if you, myself, Derek Smallwood and Rod Hills, all dressed more or less the same, wandered down the street and you introduced us to a citizen and said, 'He's the chief executive, he's the Lord Mayor and he's the leader - who's in charge?' then the average citizen will say, 'Er, pass", wouldn't they? And that's what we are trying to abolish, to create a situation where people can identify who they can get their hands on at election time."

If the council did go ahead with direct elections for cabinet "ministers" in York, it would raise the possibility of the city's familiar faces turning to politics, in the footsteps of former runner Sebastian Coe, who was an MP, and former actress Glenda Jackson, now a minister. Here, we present a fun look at how an "accessible" cabinet of familiar faces in York could be made up.

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