THIS year’s county council elections will be different in as much as the traditional offering of candidates will be supplemented by a significant increase in the number of UKIP would-be councillors in wards usually occupied by Conservatives.

In North Yorkshire, for example, UKIP is fielding it first-ever candidates, although it has not managed to contest all wards.

The Conservatives have suffered three defections, including one Richmondshire district councillor, but with due respect to Coun Stephanie Todd and the two Scarborough independents who have jumped ship, they are not political heavyweights.

Will UKIP capitalise on disaffection with the Conservatives nationally? Inevitably, they will to some degree.

But to a large extent their success will depend on how closely electors scrutinise what they promise to do at County Hall.

UKIP’s policies on immigration and public spending are well known, but where do they stand on local issues?

We wait to hear, for example, what UKIP would do about North Yorkshire’s problem with waste disposal.

Would it advocate putting the issue of a waste incinerator to one of its promised local referendums?

What about issues like social care? And how would it square its pledge to protect rural schools, build more grammar schools, mend the roads, upgrade public transport, reinstate rural bus routes, reopen railway lines, introduce free parking in town centres and preserve libraries with the need to control public spending which it also, obviously, advocates?

Can all the money be found by curbing council executives’ pay, councillors’ allowances and leaving the European Union?

We look forward to hearing answers to these questions in the next fortnight.