Penri James's blog quite rightly draws attention to Ceredigion Council’s recently published ‘Highways During Winter/Priffyrdd Dros y Gaeaf' leaflet. This was sent out to absolutely everyone on the county’s electoral roll, resulting in some households receiving four separate copies in different envelopes.The issue was raised in last week's Highways Scrutiny Committee who were told that the Council employed a private contractor to distribute the leaflets for a fixed fee on the basis of one for every household. For their own reasons the contractor chose to send their leaflets out the way they did without any additional cost to the Council.
This led to a bit of head scratching in the committee followed by the supposition, and it was supposition, that the contractor must have had the software to send one leaflet to each elector very easily but that employing someone to manually reduce their electoral list down to single households would have cost them more than the extra leaflets. Still, as one councillor pointed out, although the additional leaflets didn’t cost the Council any more, there’s been some wastage somewhere and four identical envelopes on the door mat didn't look good. When you’re a local council, being seen to be economical is almost as important as actually being economical.
Council officers accepted that, as part of any future contract, they’d actually have to spell it out - that one leaflet for every household means just that, and more is less in the eyes of the public.