Letter: ‘Lordly’ Oliver Expects Us to Believe the Word of the Westminster Tory Party

Published on: 7 Sep, 2020
Updated on: 7 Sep, 2020

Cllr Tim Oliver

From: John Perkins

In response to: SCC’s Oliver Denies ‘Power-Grab’, Says They Already Serve 1.2m Residents

Cllr Tim Oliver must take us for fools if he wants us to believe “all this would be doing is adding on some of those responsibilities that sit with the districts and boroughs”. Why only some? Those other bodies would be abolished, leaving SCC with total power.

He also expects us to take him at his word when he claims: “small unitaries don’t really produce those greater efficiencies”. But usefully he shows the real source of that claim by stating “the government has seen”, the government being the Conservative Party.

Finally, he wasn’t elected to look after residents, he was elected to serve them. I for one find his lordly and disdainful attitude difficult to accept.

Responses to Letter: ‘Lordly’ Oliver Expects Us to Believe the Word of the Westminster Tory Party

Keith Francis Reply

September 7, 2020 at 9:24 pm

Before all this came out weren’t the leaders of Tory-controlled county councils invited to a secret meeting with the government? Now Cllr Tim Oliver is flying the flag for this idea.

In the past six months, Surrey County Council has been forced, first by the pandemic and second the opportunity provided for staff to work from home or if needed local council offices, that it has dropped its original idea of moving from County Hall to offices in Woking.

Doesn’t Surrey County Council’s mega property portfolio (reportedly 1,200 properties) include one appropriate for its own use?
Peta Malthouse Reply

September 9, 2020 at 10:08 am

The motives are clearly political and power grabbing but how would it benefit us the public who pay for all this. Don’t get caught up with the idea that somehow administrative cost would be reduced and therefore cheaper.

I survived the Local Government reorganisation in 1974. All that happened then was that the Guildford Rural District Council became part of the borough. The focus of the authority for over two years was how it should be managed: the muddle and mess of trying to combine internal administration systems to make those so-called savings possible was costly.

Staff had to reapply for their own jobs, offices were moved, the bills were immense. Communication between the borough and county council follows well-worn paths and inefficiency in that field is rarely heard of.

In Buckinghamshire, I am told by a friend that all that has been achieved is the dismantling of services particular to the towns and that those budgets have simply been subsumed. That is where the costs savings are made. In the meantime, we would suffer a costly meltdown.