Letter: Local Government Reorganisation Will Go the Same Way as Police and Crime Commissioners

Published on: 20 Dec, 2025
Updated on: 20 Dec, 2025

Tim Oliver – leader of Surrey County Council

From Bernard Quoroll

In response to: County Council Leader Says There Will Be a Mayor of Surrey

This is devolution in name only. Having a mayor moves decision-making further from local people and closer to central government. You only get a devolution deal if you do what the government of the day wants you to do and the government still holds the purse strings.

Local politicians can perhaps be forgiven for playing ball because it draws what appears to be new money onto their patch and it makes them look influential in getting it. But mayors also still have to be paid for and it is another level of bureaucracy, aka “jobs for the boys and girls.”

Governments used to do this directly via civil service-led regional offices reporting to a government minister. Such regions were much larger than Surrey and based on areas that were recognisably economically coherent – the South East, West Midlands or London etc. Coherence was recognised through common transport and road systems, strategic planning and interdependent economic interest.

The early mayoral deals related to areas which looked broadly more like regions, but Surrey is arguably too small to fit the pattern and civil servants love patterns. Then this Government came along and decided to conflate the idea with their own reorganisation proposals. As time progresses, these deals get harder to justify as the Government tries to stretch or cut the corpse of local democracy to fit a Procrustean bed.

Unitary councils can organise themselves perfectly well around common interests and negotiate with Governments without such artificial constructs, which I predict will only go the way of Police and Crime Commissioners – another failed experiment.

It reminds me of David Brent in The Office: “There’s good news and bad news, The bad news is that you are all going to Swindon. The good news is that I have got a promotion.”

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