Weymouth & Portland Transition Towns is considering submitting a suggestion under the Sustainable Communities Act that councils be allowed if they wish, to charge extra council tax on second homes.

As well as producing extra revenue for the community, this would discourage second homes which contribute little or nothing to the local economy and weaken the sense of community.

We believe this idea is a popular one in holiday areas, but at present councils have no powers to charge more than 90 per cent of the normal council tax on second homes.

At this stage we only want councils to have the power to levy extra tax, not the obligation to do so.

Also, to increase public participation in local politics we want a voting system that gives voters more choice than just which of the national parties they favour, and advocate the system already in use in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

In this system, called Single Transferable Vote or STV for short, voters rank candidates in order of preference: specifying their first, second, third etc, choices as far as they wish to go.

In theory the existing system allows you to vote for people.

In practice there is no real choice within parties. Under STV there would be.

We are asking for a national referendum on this.

We are also working on a suggestion on congestion charging for Weymouth.

We have to submit these suggestions to Dorset County Council by April 30.

If anyone wants to support us on this, or has other comments they may email me on david.smith@aic.co.uk.

Weymouth & Portland Transition Towns is part of an international network dedicated to creating awareness of the twin challenges of global warming and peak oil, and to support people who want to reduce their carbon footprint by growing their own food, cycling, saving energy, etc.

David Smith, Weymouth.