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This would be fair enough if you were comparing like with like but Cornwall Council is a unitary council providing local government, the Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly manage devolved powers from westminster.
In Wales they have over 1200 Unitary councillors for 2.9 million so do the maths ... in comparison in Cornwall we are actually under-represented by local councillors which is why they are so over worked now and it's considered a full-time job to do the post effectively.
If of course we had proper devolution to the nation of Cornwall and a Cornish Assembly existed then may be 18 AMs would be appropriate

Exactly, 1,200 Welsh councillors for 3 million, compared to 123 Cornish councillors for half a million.

If we were to have the same ratio as Wales then we would need 200 local councillors. Not including potential assembly members.

The scales are not tipped in our favour.

I was about to make the very same points as the previous two posts.

I have to agree with all the above, Wales and Scotland have far greater representation than Cornwall. More crunching less numbers methinks!

Oh and I just wanted to ask about the header "Graham Smith's Cornwall" does that mean I am your subject? or tenant? are you now the Duke?

Graham's correspondent's are right to point out that he's not comparing like with like. Scotland and Wales have the benefit or not of both assembly members and councillors.

On the other hand quite why Cornwall Council benefits from 123 councillors escapes me. Cornwall County Council used to have about 80 and I think Devon struggles on with just 60. If cuts are coming then I would support the number of councillors being a suitable early target for any axe.

I see your point Phil but Devon has those sixty councillors in Exeter then all of the councillors for the eight districts and two unitary authorities.I don't know how many councillors that is but I am sure it is a lot more than we have in Cornwall.

I agree with CJenkin, Andrew Wallis, and the others is that this article incorrectly implies that a county council is the same as an Assembly. Nobody wanted a unitary council - it has nowhere near the same kind of strategic powers as the Welsh assembly, and to suggest there are too many councillors when the work involved - planning, sorting out residents problems, the vast array of meetings, all the other work they do means most councillors work a good 50 hour week and have to be on call 24 hours a day 7 days a week to help people sometimes. This article is a bit of an insult to our local councillors who aren't in it for the money, they could be earning far more elsewhere, most of them they do it because they care about the community they were elected to represent.

Yes Cornwall needs an assembly with probably no more than 20 members, but it also needs local councillors to do all the everyday stuff. Perhaps this reporter should spend a day with a Welsh or Cornish county councillor, then spend a day with a Welsh assembly member, and see the difference for himself.

Before the switch to unitary Cornwall has 82 county and 249 district councillors, totalling 331. The unitary has 123.

We are underrepresented when compared with other unitary authorities in the "south west". Our ratio is higher than Plymouth and Bristol, but lower than Torbay, Bournemouth, Poole, North Somerset, Bath/North East Somerset, South Gloucestershire and Swindon. Cornwall is by far the largest unitary in terms of population in the country.

If we given the average level of representation across the "south west" we would need 145 councillors.

Find the statistics here:
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]

So the scales are not really tipped in our favour in any way.