A senior county councillor has backed giving greater powers to North Yorkshire Council area constituency committees.

Currently, county councillors in parliamentary constituency areas such as Harrogate and Knaresborough meet every two months to discuss and debate issues from education and transport to housing and the environment.

These area constituency committees can propose motions and make recommendations to the council’s executive, but in practice, the bodies have little power.

The impending abolition of the seven district councils in North Yorkshire will concentrate decision-making into the hands of the new unitary authority in Northallerton, which has led to concerns that local councillors will find it harder to influence decisions affecting their areas.

However, Conservative councillor for Mid-Craven, Simon Myers, who also has responsibility for planning on the council’s executive, said he supports area committees “taking some of the burden” off North Yorkshire Council.

He said:

“I was involved with running Craven District Council for many years and I know how many decisions we took.

“The idea that the executive can take all those decisions from Bentham to Scarborough is to me, too much work. I can see using area committees to take some of that burden as a valid thing to do.”

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At a meeting of the Skipton and Ripon’s area committee last week, Andy Brown, Green Party councillor for Aire Valley, said local government reorganisation presented an opportunity for area constituency committees to become “more than talking shops”.

Cllr Brown said:

“We have to decide whether the area committees are with people with a vision for the area and are thirsty with ideas, or do we want to lobby the MP and listen to a few reports?

“We’d like to be hearing officers on important issues like economic development, we’d like powers on things like planning. We’d like to send a message to the executive that local area committees need to be significant.”

Last week, North Yorkshire County Council announced the new authority will create six new planning committees to oversee decisions across parliamentary constituency areas to run alongside the current area committees.