Letter: Local Government Reorganisation Is Good News

Published on: 17 Jan, 2025
Updated on: 17 Jan, 2025

From Brian Creese

Guildford Labour activist

Having campaigned over many years on the merits of scrapping Surrey’s inefficient, expensive and bureaucratic two-tier (sometimes three-tier) system of local government, it is wonderful to see decisive and swift action from the new Labour government to reform local government.

The current system is simply not fit for purpose: almost no residents have a clear understanding of which council is responsible for what, councillors are constantly bombarded with complaints about matters they have no responsibility for, while the various councils wrangle between each other to avoid taking responsibility.

One council means one administration responsible for every aspect of local government, one set of councillors who have no excuse for not sorting out issues.

The current system involves Surrey having 12 [one for each of the 11 borough or district councils, plus one for the county council] council offices, 12 senior executives – many on five-figure salaries – and over 500 councillors paid allowances, ensuring that our democratic system is really very expensive. A system of unitary councils will be more efficient, more accountable and cheaper to run.

The Government Bill however, offers us something more – the possibility of a regional mayor – our very own Andy Burnham – to represent the regions at the highest levels of government and on the national and international stage.

The devil of course is in the detail:

should there be two unitary authorities or three?
what do we do with Woking’s debt?
who will we share a mayor with?

There is plenty left to decide and argue about, but abolishing the current cumbersome system, and sweeping away the out-of-date Tory county council is great news for all Surrey residents.

Responses to Letter: Local Government Reorganisation Is Good News

John Murray Reply

January 18, 2025 at 12:40 pm

There is an old saying in business ‘If you don’t know what to do, have a reorganisation’.

It seems most appropriate for the current government.
Bill Stokoe Reply

January 18, 2025 at 4:27 pm

Happy to go along with a unitary authority, provided Guildford gets a Town Council.
H Trevor Jones Reply

January 18, 2025 at 9:52 pm

Brian Creese makes many sensible comments, but any reorganisation has its one-off costs, so has anyone calculated the payback time?

Also, I query whether it’s ideal to have the same level of authority for strategic transport (railways, main roads and non-local bus services), which I think should be dealt with at higher regional level, ie TfSE in our case, given the level of cross-council-boundary commuting etc.

It’s bad enough now doing these at county level and would be worse at unitary level. But based on my rail travels (I don’t drive) I get the impression that there’s less cross-regional travel.
David Roberts Reply

January 19, 2025 at 2:12 pm

What is Labour’s answer to the charge that abolishing borough councils will over-centralise power at a more remote, sub-county level, with each councillor struggling to cover five or six current wards?

Clue: democracy can only be protected by devolving more power, with matching resources, to parish/town councils. By spectacularly winning its judicial review case against Guildford council, Send Parish Council has just demonstrated that it has a better understanding of the law and local opinion than higher local authorities.
John Hawthorne Reply

January 20, 2025 at 11:05 am

The current system is not really democratic as hardly any one votes and the few that do get really confused by everything – even which council is responsible for potholes and toilets.

Ideally, Surrey probably needs one layer of government – possibly with a mayor of some sort.