Are you white, male and retired....if so, you must be a Councillor!

I jest, obviously. Well....maybe!

My mocking stems from my reading of the National Census of Local Authority Councillors 2008, which is published this week. The research was undertaken jointly by the Local Government Association (LGA) and the Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government (I&DeA).

For a young, female councillor who also works full-time, the report makes depressing reading; particularly as from the figures, the numbers of younger people and women becoming Councillors is falling, despite efforts to encourage them to stand for election.

Overall, 30.8% of Councillors are female, compared with 51.3% of the adult population. The average age of Councillors rose from 55.4 years in 1997 to 58.8 this year. This means that 86.8% of councillors are 45 and over, compared with only 51.9% of the population as a whole.

The proportion of Councillors who are retired has increased from 34.1% in 1997 to 43.5% this year. Compare this with the actual adult population, where 22.3% are retired and you can see how desperate the situation is.

This is a disgrace, especially given the efforts that have been made to try and recruit "different" people to the role of Councillor. How can we claim that a Council represents its community when it doesn't even come close?

Teignbridge District Council ran an open evening before the elections in 2007, where prospective candidates could come and talk to existing Councillors and learn more about the role. I attended the event, which was extremely useful, but it is clear that there is so much more that we can be doing.

Part of my role as the Portfolio Holder for Communuties and Regulation involves looking at ways of encouraging people to stand for election. I have made the case quite strongly to officers that we need to be doing more in the future, as we are not building the next generation of councillors to come forward.

That said, Councils can only do so much, and the political parties, of whatever hue, need to be grasping the nettle and recruiting more people and giving them the skills and confidence to stand for public office. I can only speak as a Liberal Democrat, but it seems to me that the party makes a lot of effort to recruit diverse people to stand for Parliament, but much less is done to recruit frontline Councillors.

I'd be interested to hear other people's views - what do you think the barriers are to standing for election to local Councils? What could the political parties do to encourage more people to come forward, and what should Councils like Teignbridge be doing to make sure that the Councils truly represent the communuties that they are supposed to?