Letter: Guildford Needs to Protect Community Assets Before New Unitary Authority Created

Published on: 28 Oct, 2025
Updated on: 28 Oct, 2025

The two unitary council solution, as chosen

From George Potter

Lib Dem county and borough councillor

My personal view on today’s news…

The government has announced its decision on the new shape of local government in Surrey and we are going to have two unitary councils in Surrey, West and East, with Guildford borough going into the West Surrey council.

There will be two councillors elected in May 2026 to represent each of the current county council seats, meaning Guildford borough will be represented by 20 out of the 90 seats in the new council.

The West Surrey Unitary Authority, I will point out, has been carefully drawn by its proposers to shift all the local government debt into the west to avoid it coming into the east.

In the West we get Woking (£2.1 billion debt), Spelthorne (£1.1 billion debt), Runnymede (£0.6 billion debt), as well as most likely the lion’s share of the county council’s own £1.2 billion of debt (which is set to hit £2 billion within the next three years).

The only good news on the debt front is that the government has said it will write off £0.5 billion of Woking’s debt next year as part of “Phase 1”, so hopefully there will be other write-offs coming in future years, otherwise West Surrey will be bankrupt from day one.

Nevertheless, this means that in West Surrey we will all see our council services under intense pressure, from day one, in order to pay for the cost of servicing a mountain of debt.

The new unitary authorities don’t come into existence until April 2027 (though elections for them take place next year), so it’s very important that we:

a) do everything we can to place valued community buildings beyond the reach of the new councils (such as by transferring them to parish and town councils), and;

b) make sure that the people we elect to run the new councils are people who will take the financial crisis seriously from day one and have the experience necessary to deal with it.