Newark Local Council (Newark is in Nottinghamshire) has been a Tory stronghold for a long time and the local council meetings there were always started with a christian prayer, despite not all the councillors and certainly not all their constituents, or even a majority of them, being christian.

In the recent local elections, in Newark as in most of the UK, the Tories got absolutely rinsed and dropped from holding 29 out of 39 seats to 14.

In a mark of progress and recognition that the majority of people in the UK are not christians and holding prayers before meetings designed to serve the public is, at best, unrepresentative, the new majority leaders have scrapped the prayer requirement, saying:

“…[C]ouncillors will now be asked to spend a moment before the full council meetings in contemplation of the business of the meeting, or other matters from the wider community which may impact on our residents. It is felt that this being a replacement for pre-meeting prayers demonstrates the way in which the council wishes to work to be inclusive of, and truly representative of, all our communities.”

Newark are now the third Council to do this, along with the Isle Of Wight Council and Congleton Town Council.

This is a good step forward and I hope more Councils start being reflective of the communities they’ve been elected to serve.