Today our ‘live’ listing hit the 400 mark. Cllr Flick Rea became the 400th councillor to feature in the Cllr Tweeps list of Tweeps. Quickly followed by four others there are now 404 local councillors listed in our directory (technically there are 424, but twenty are hidden having lost elections, resigned or, in one case, seen their council abolished from under them).
Of course, such stats are not that meaningful since we know many do not tweet; some have given up, some have never got the hang of it, and others seem to have joined Twitter as a purely voyeuristic exercise. Just as having a large following might just indicate that spammers haven’t been blocked, being a councillor on - or off - Twitter doesn’t necessarily say anything about the quality of their engagement or work as a locally elected leader.
But let’s not worry about fairness or statistical accuracy. Let’s have some league tables.
Party standings
The Lib Dems retain their lead at the head of the league table. The Conservatives continue to be a close second with Labour in third - not totally out of reach, but with some work to do.
| Party | Councillors |
|---|---|
| Liberal Democrat | 127 |
| Conservative | 122 |
| Labour | 103 |
| Independent | 12 |
| Green | 10 |
| DUP | 4 |
| BNP | 3 |
| Plaid Cymru | 2 |
| Residents Association | 2 |
| SNP | 2 |
| English Democrats | 1 |
| Isleworth Community Group | 1 |
| Respect | 1 |
| UKIP | 1 |
| Ulster Unionist Party | 1 |
| Party affiliation unknown or not stated | 12 |
Tweeting councils
Lambeth has long held the record as the ‘tweetingest’ council. There are currently 14 accounts associated with councillors there.
However, that may not reflect the number of tweeting councillors, since some of those belong to ‘ward’ accounts where individual councillors also tweet (inflating the figure) but likewise the whole Conservative group operates just one account. This happens elsewhere and means it’s not possible to accurately state how many councillors are actually tweeting - since you cannot tell how many people are operating a joint account.
The top ten (which is actually 11, because of the joint standings) is based purely on the number of twitter accounts, it may be other councils, in which councillors co-operated in a joint account, actually have more tweeting councillors.
| Rank | Council | Tweeting councillors |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | London Borough of Lambeth | 14 |
| 2= | Leicester City Council | 9 |
| London Borough of Lewisham | 9 | |
| 4= | Liverpool City Council | 8 |
| London Borough of Southwark | 8 | |
| Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council | 8 | |
| 7= | London Borough of Wandsworth | 7 |
| Reading Borough Council | 7 | |
| Shepway District Council | 7 | |
| 10= | Brentwood Borough Council | 6 |
| London Borough of Camden | 6 |
It goes without saying that this is only accurate at the time of writing (and actually wasn’t that accurate even then, since there were two additions while the figures were compiled) but it can only - surely - be healthy for online engagement that both tables are so close.
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