Letter: Government Statements on Council Reorganisation Leave Me More Nervous Than Ever

Published on: 3 May, 2025
Updated on: 4 May, 2025

From Patrick Bray

In response to: Government To Bail Out Woking Council To Facilitate Local Government Reorganisation

Reading the statements from the government leaves me feeling more nervous than ever.

It’s obvious that the financial problems in Woking cannot be left for any local council (separate or conglomerated) to deal with. However the news of the inevitable (and correct) bail-out from central government comes with this important caveat that councils will “still be expected to continue cutting costs and finding ‘best value’ for taxpayers by selling off its assets – even after Surrey was reorganised…”

This suggests to me that we have learnt no lessons from our rush to privatise in the 1980s and the catastrophic costs and poor service that have resulted.

It appears that we are to be expected to sell more assets across Surrey to support the debt, the very thing this “bail-out” was to alleviate.

Perhaps now is the time to stop selling off the family silver so that we continue to have public assets instead of solely public liabilities owed to private individuals and corporations.

Personally I have grave concerns that the proposed Surrey mega councils will provide the projected savings – and there is no suggestion that it can improve services. What it does seem to offer is to move decision-making further away from those it affects.

I truly hope that we look back in future years at how successful this policy was. I fear we will look back at what we lost.