tamashi

The local government act identifies four possible labels for Councillors; these are Labour, Liberal Democrat, Conservative and Independent/Minor Party. All Parties other than the big three go in the "Independent/Minor Party" Group, often shortened to "Independent"

If there are two or more individual Councils who want to band together they can request they be treated as a Group in their own right, "Ratepayer" or "Hospital Alliance" being two examples. These labels cannot appear on ballot papers as they are not registered political parties but they can be recognised as groups within an individual council. According to Steve Allison's Blogg there was a period on Hartlepool Council when Independents, Tories and UKIP sat together as an "Administrative Group" this gave then sufficient numbers to get a couple of Committee Chairmanships, which up till then had all been Labour. If the Lib-Dems had been willing to join the Admin Group then Labour would have lost control of Hartlepool Council. However, the Lib-Dems were not willing to do so and propped up the Labour Group enabling them to keep control as the biggest single party rather than the Majority Party

Unfortunately there are many disadvantages in being a small group, the main one being in the allocation of Committee Seats which is done on a political balance basis. If a Council was made up of 30 Tories, 15 Labour, 15 Lib Dems and 10 Independents then a Committee of 10 would be allocated 5 Tories, 2 Labour, 2 Lib Dems and 1 Independent. If two of the independents were actually UKIP then they would be entitled to attend an "Independent Group Meeting" to agree who from the 10 possible would take the seat. This is where all the horse trading goes on. However if two "independents" split off to be the UKIP Group then the Seats would be still be allocated 5 Tories, 2 Labour, 2 Lib Dems and 1 Independent but the two UKIP Councillors would no longer be in the horse trade. To keep the Council Politically balanced would require every 30/70 Seats to be Tory, 15/70 each to be Lib Dem and Labour, 8/70 to be Independent and 2/70 to be UKIP/15. This means any committee with more than 10 seats would have an Independent by right but it would need 35 seats before UKIP got a place automatically. Every 35th seat would still need to be UKIP but these seats would allocated by the big groups on a "take it or leave it" basis.

Before Independents started forming their own groups on Councils this is how all none big 3 Party seats were allocated. Only by playing the numbers Game can none lib/lab/con councillors hope to get seats on any committees with any influence.