Having just read Peter Riddell's excellent ‘In Defence of Politicians,' in which he makes the case for elected accountable politicians at a national level, I thought that it was about time that we celebrated councillors.

Every neighbourhood is represented by at least one and in many cases several elected councillors. Sadly all too often council elections are a minority sport with less than half the eligible voters making the effort to exercise their democratic entitlement and duty; and many councillors elected on a minority of these votes. Nevertheless, councillors are the only elected and therefore democratically accountable, local community leaders.