Letter: Who Is Taking the Legacy Debt Issue Seriously?

Published on: 24 Apr, 2026
Updated on: 24 Apr, 2026

The debt is variously calculated to represent £15,000 to £19,000 for each household in West Surrey.

From George Potter

Liberal Democrat borough and county councillor and candidate for Guildford East in the forthcoming West Surrey Council Election

In response to: The Legacy Debt Should Be Borne By Those Who Created This Sorry Mess

It is hard to disagree with Mr Quoroll’s assessment of the cause of local government indebtedness, especially the part that the destruction of the local government audit system played in enabling reckless borrowing and investment.

However, what has been missing from media coverage of the West Surrey debt crisis is the hard facts and figures which lay bare the scale of the problem.

Those facts and figures are already in the public domain but have gone largely unreported. The truly horrifying figure that I have not seen reported anywhere is this: the new West Surrey Council is set to spend 40 per cent of its yearly budget on paying for the debt.

This figure is not a party political creation or an exaggeration, it is from an illustrative financial baseline estimate for the new council, compiled by finance officers, for the cross-party West Surrey Joint Committee.

If anyone doubts the accuracy of what I am saying, please go and read the report (Item 19, Annex 3): https://mycouncil.surreycc.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=970&MId=10037

The report, which my Liberal Democrat colleagues on the committee requested be produced, lays bare the scale of the debt crisis facing West Surrey, and how the careful selection of council boundaries has left East Surrey in a radically better financial position, at the expense of residents in the West.

Council debt in West Surrey stands at a total of around £4.2 billion, or £3.8 billion net once you take into account the value of investments. In East Surrey it’s just under £0.5 billion.

West Surrey will face a budget shortfall, in its first year, of £158 million, which amounts to 17 per cent of its baseline budget. East Surrey will face a budget shortfall of £35 million, which amounts to just 5 per cent of its baseline budget.

But the reality for West Surrey is even worse than these figures suggest, as the above figures include £112 million of one-off government exceptional financial support for Woking. If that support doesn’t continue, then in 2028/29 the budget shortfall for West Surrey would soar to £309 million a year.

All of this is because the debt-financing costs in West Surrey are absolutely crushing. In the current financial year alone, debt-financing costs across West Surrey amount to 39.9 per cent of annual council net revenue budgets, or £320 million a year. In East Surrey the equivalent figure is just 7.6 per cent of annual council budgets.

And, when it comes to the idea that efficiency savings from merging different councils will save the day, the report shows that these efficiency savings won’t kick in until five years from now, and even then will only save West Surrey a measly £23 million a year.

That’s £23 million a year of efficiency savings in five-years-time, against an immediate budget deficit of £158 million.

All of the above is taken directly from the financial baseline report. The numbers speak for themselves.

Where politics enters is in what follows.

The Liberal Democrats opposed the rush into local government reorganisation in Surrey, which was spearheaded by Conservative councillors, with the active support of Labour and Residents Association councillors, precisely because there was no clarity on how debt would be handled. Events have unfortunately proved those warnings correct.

As a result the Liberal Democrat election campaign in West Surrey is focused, out of necessity, on dealing with the debt and stabilising council finances. If this is not achieved, then bankruptcy will follow and central government commissioners will be sent in to cut services to the bare legal minimum.

Other parties’ responses have been inadequate and, frankly, irresponsible. The Conservatives are promising expensive freebies for residents funded by efficiency savings that will, in reality, be swallowed by debt costs.

Labour, for their part, appear to not even realise that there is a debt crisis, and are so ill-informed on local government finances that they seem to mistakenly believe that Guildford was given extra funding by the government last year to tackle deprivation (it wasn’t), and can be found insisting in the The Guildford Dragon NEWS that an unworkable debt burden being dumped on the shoulders of West Surrey residents is somehow “fair”.

The other parties barely engage with council finances at all.

None of this is remotely up to the scale of the serious, hard-headed approach necessary to deal with the debt crisis.

Many voters may not usually choose the Liberal Democrats, and a healthy democracy depends on real choice. But in this election, only one party appears to understand the scale of West Surrey’s financial crisis and to be treating it with the seriousness it demands, and that is the Liberal Democrats.

I hope residents will vote accordingly.