Letter: It Is Less Unfair for Other Parts of Surrey to Pay the Debt

Published on: 21 Apr, 2026
Updated on: 21 Apr, 2026

From Lottie Harding

In response to: We Should All Be Outraged About the Failure to Deal with Legacy Debt

I am sure the Government completely understands the debt issue.

The issue is that while we may feel it is unfair that council taxpayers in West Surrey will need to pay towards repaying the debt and want the Government to do more to write off the debt, there is no real such thing as a debt write off, only a change in who pays.

Is it any fairer for tax payers in Devon, Cornwall, Shropshire, the West Midlands, Yorkshire, Cumbria or any other part of the country have to pay for debts built up by authorities in Surrey who took on those debts to mainly to acquire commercial property and redevelop their town centres or other parts of their county?

I am sure the Government thinks it is more probable that taxpayers in West Surrey are more likely to visit Woking and benefit from the redevelopment than taxpayers in Cumbria.

On a similar note, I personally don’t want to contribute to paying off the debts of Thurrock Council which they ran up on huge investments in solar farms in the Essex estuary. However as the government are providing £200 million debt support to Thurrock in the same way they are providing £500 million to Woking then all of us taxpayers in Surrey and every other part of the country will now be paying for Thurrock’s debt too through our income and other national taxes.

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