Scotland's local authority association COSLA is urging the Scottish Executive to separate local and Scotitish parliamentary elections by at least a year in future. A report to its leaders' meeting last week said they should be ‘decoupled' after concern that local elections were ignored by the national media and there was a high rate of rejected votes caused by the different voting systems being used together. COSLA had called for ‘decoupling' in 2004 and the report says its fears were ‘realised in the May election' this year. It adds that if local and national elections go ahead together again, local elections should come first ‘given the effect of voter fatigue on the second elections'. The report to the leaders' committee also said COSLA needed to spend more time pro-actively developing relationships with partners and strategic policies and less time having to react to initiatives from the Executive.
