Letter: A Guildford Town Council Would Be Costly, Weak and Compete with GBC

Published on: 24 Aug, 2024
Updated on: 24 Aug, 2024

From Bernard Quoroll

In response to a comment from Bill Stokoe on the article: Unitaries Are Not Necessarily a Silver Bullet

The problem with creating a town council for Guildford is that it would be costly to run, have few meaningful powers and, with a population of around 78,000, compete with the existing borough council, whose total population is only roughly twice that. No other community in the borough comes close in size.

A Guildford Town Council would rank about fourth in size among the fifty or so, so-called “super parishes” in the country, most of which have populations nearer to 30,000. The largest ones, (which would include a Guildford Town Council), look like pale district councils but without their powers or resources.

There is a role for parish councils to give a voice to small communities and run very local services such as parks, open spaces, small car parks, cemeteries and the like. They can also fulfil a human need for very local representation and recognition, similar to that found in most countries in Europe. By comparison, a unitary council delivers well over 400 individual services.

Many of the larger town and parish councils have only recently been created on the back of unitary council reorganisations, especially in places like Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire and Chippenham in Wiltshire, following the abolition of district councils in favour of unitary counties – some might say as a kind of consolation prize. Counties in turn have not resisted them as their creation superficially supports a bid for unitary status.

But they do not come free. Unitary councils, plagued by the growing cost of care services and dramatically reduced incomes, have been only too happy to offload local property assets onto parishes to avoid future maintenance costs.

Town and Parish councils, ambitious for growth but frequently lacking the skills and resources to manage them effectively, have recruited more staff and raised their precepts to pay for them, which of course forms part of the Council Tax levied on their own communities.

In financial terms alone, it feels to me a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic! More importantly, it means that the real decisions will in practice get taken further away from people who are affected by them, with less representation and less appreciation of local needs and desires.