PLANS to cut the number of East Hampshire District Council community forums has been described as an attempt to disenfranchise electors. Councillors were looking at their proposed calendar of meetings for 2007 at their full council meeting last week. It included only six meetings of each community forum compared with the nine scheduled this year. Individual forums are held for the Petersfield and Liss areas, Clanfield, Rowlands Castle and Horndean, Whitehill, Bordon, Headley, Grayshott and Lindford, and Alton and its surrounding villages. They are billed as a chance for people to have their say on issues affecting the district, and to put their views to their district councillors. Attendance has varied greatly depending on the topics appearing on the agenda. Some meetings this year have been cancelled. But Jerry Janes told fellow councillors last week: "This is a reduction in local democracy. I don't think we should be disenfranchising our local communities." And Zoya Faddy added: "I think this is a retrograde step. The thinking behind the forums was to involve the communities, the parish councils, and the local organisations. This was the fundamental reason for setting these committees up in the first place and we are denying people this opportunity by cutting the number of meetings. "There are ways and means of involving people more which haven't yet been investigated." Bob Ayer told the meeting: "I feel we are in danger of oversimplifying this – the issue is community involvement and the quality of the involvement, and not simply the mechanics of the number of meetings." He said community forums were valuable for the interaction they allowed with members of the public, and he was concerned this was being lost. East Hampshire District Council leader Ferris Cowper said he believed the calendar of meetings should be discussed again in the light of comments made by councillors. But he told the meeting: "Let's not be guilty of having short memories." He said it was not that long ago that community forum meetings in the north-east area were so poorly attended that there were barely enough councillors present to be enable votes to be taken. Mr Cowper added that it could be argued that fewer, better quality meetings would be a more successful approach.