Letter: How Can We Trust Cllr Oliver?

Published on: 10 Apr, 2025
Updated on: 10 Apr, 2025

From George Potter

Lib Dem borough and county councillor

In response to: Local Government Reorganisation Must Strengthen Links Between Communities

One of Tim Oliver’s first acts after the last council elections was to abolish the Joint Committees which were set up for precisely the purpose he talks about in his letter.

They were replaced with massive centralisation of decision-making, with the exception of token budgets for each county councillor which were launched with promises of “community engagement” through new “engagement tools” that then never materialised.

Under Cllr Oliver’s leadership the county council has centralised (without consultation) on-street parking, verge cutting and many other services which previously worked well, when they were devolved to borough and district councils, but which have now seen the imposition of badly-managed, centralised, one-size-fits-no-one replacements which completely ignore local knowledge and needs.

How, therefore, can anyone trust anything Cllr Oliver has to say about strengthening community engagement and localisation? His entire political career is littered with a history of destructive centralisation, riding roughshod over local voices and communities in the process.

There is, of course, nothing stopping SCC from establishing his ‘community-level boards’ right now, if Tim Oliver was serious about them. Except, of course, that won’t happen because it would mean having to actually work with borough and district councils and local communities.

It would also cause many to ask the question as to why Surrey County Council was re-inventing the old Local Area Committees which themselves were scrapped to make way for the Joint Committees.