New legislation will introduce two five-year terms for council elections that will break the electoral link between local government and the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Government's minister for parliament, Bruce Crawford, revealed plans to ‘decouple' local government elections from parliamentary elections as part of the formal response to the Gould report on the disastrous May 2007 elections. Mr Bruce said urgent reform was needed to restore public confidence in the electoral system after the combined elections which saw 146,099 votes in the Holyrood ballot rejected together with 38,352 local council votes. Already, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) has said it favours holding separate council elections in 2012. Mr Bruce said: ‘The Scottish Government supports all of Gould's recommendations in principle, but we also recognise further work is required to determine how best to put them into practice.'
