The Dragon Says: We Should All Be Outraged About the Failure to Deal with Legacy Debt

Published on: 18 Apr, 2026
Updated on: 19 Apr, 2026

Is the penny beginning, at last, to drop?

After months of apparent indifference, it seems that Guildford and Waverley voters are waking up to the reality that their existing borough councils, largely free of debt, are about to be subsumed into a new council that will be saddled with a £4 billion debt from the outset.

See: Taxpayers ‘Angry’ About Potential Council Tax Hikes Following Reorganisation

How can this be right? The responsibility for these debts lies squarely with the councils that created them. We might feel sorry for the voters within those boroughs, but they did, at least, elect the councils responsible. The rest of us did not.

Did anyone imagine that when the council reorganisation was announced the legacy debt issue was going to be simply ignored? It’s doubtful, but with just week’s to go to the West Surrey election that’s what is happening.

The failure to sort out the problem fairly is probably the biggest single iniquity of the whole wretched local government reorganisation here in Surrey.

No reorganisation should have even been contemplated before it was sorted.

£4 billion is 200 million of these £20 pound notes. As things stand, all of us in West Surrey will end up having to pay a share. Wikipedia

Labour might say council reorganisation was in their manifesto in the 2024 general election but so what? How many read party manifestos before voting? And since when have politicians cared about keeping election promises?

In any case, only 34 per cent of the electorate that voted, voted Labour. For them to claim a mandate for anything is stretching it. They certainly have no true mandate for local government reorganisation here in Surrey, where not a single Labour MP was elected.

Surreys MPs – not one is Labour. But what are they doing about the legacy debt issue? Image: SCC

The Government forcing the reorganisation on Surrey, with the willing connivance of the Conservatives at Surrey County Council, raises a similar question being asked of the Prime Minister this weekend about the Mandelson affair: is he dishonest or incompetent?

Here in Surrey we can also ask: does his Government realise how unfair the legacy debt is? Don’t they care, or don’t they understand?

Or to put it another way, are they knaves or fools?

Responses to The Dragon Says: We Should All Be Outraged About the Failure to Deal with Legacy Debt

Dave Middleton Reply

April 18, 2026 at 10:04 pm

Well said Guildford Dragon NEWS!

We, the taxpayers of Guildford and Waverley, are being well and truly done up like kippers.
Mike Smith Reply

April 19, 2026 at 7:42 pm

Perhaps we can hope that our new councillors will do the decent thing and ensure that the debt is repaid only by Woking voters, either by increased taxes or reduced services in their areas, not the rest of us?

Editor’s comment: Woking is not the only indebted council in West Surrey.
A Windebank Reply

April 19, 2026 at 10:47 pm

… and yet all I can hear is the gentle sound of tumbleweed rolling past the doors of Surrey County Council.

Thank you Guildford Dragon, for covering this scandal, but why is it not in the national press?
John Murray Reply

April 20, 2026 at 12:55 pm

“The Government forcing the reorganisation on Surrey, with the willing connivance of the Conservatives at Surrey County Council…”
This suggests that the Conservatives were in favour of the reorganisation and could somehow have stopped it. Where is the evidence of the former (it was certainly not in the Conservative manifesto)? And how might they have achieved the latter?

Editor’s response: Surrey Conservatives were pressing for a single unitary authority in 2020. The propsal for a two-unitary solution was proposed by them in the face of opposition from a majority of the borough and district councils and members of the public in the consultation exercise. Most tellingly though, the Conservative-led SCC volunteered the reorganisation to be fast-tracked, leaving less time for issues such as legacy debt to be resolved.
- John Murray Reply
  
  April 20, 2026 at 2:10 pm
  
  The decision to recommend two authorities was a political one
  and one that was expected to favour the Conservatives. In power the Liberal Democrats would have doubtless have recommended what they considered would best suit them.
  
  The only resolution to the debt issue would be for the government to take it on. Unsurprisingly they have been unwilling to do so and it is unlikely that the economy will improve so dramatically in the future that this decision is likely to be reversed.
  
  To suggest that the Labour government is doing Surrey Conservative’s bidding is improbable to put it mildly.
RWL Davies. Reply

April 20, 2026 at 4:55 pm

“Here in Surrey we can also ask: does his Government realise how unfair the legacy debt is? Don’t they care, or don’t they understand?”

Excellent article; easy conclusion.

They don’t care, for several obvious reasons.
Keith Reeves Reply

April 21, 2026 at 11:23 am

It’s an important issue of course. However, The Dragon seems to be more concerned about the Labour Government’s actions than the non-Labour parties that created the mess in Surrey in the first place.

To casually dismiss a manifesto because no one reads it before voting is a strange view. The absurdity surely is that people don’t read them.

Questioning the government’s mandate both nationally and locally is also a little rich, considering that it’s over 90 years since a party won a majority of the popular vote. Is the government expected to implement different policies in different areas of the country depending on local voting?

The fairness of the UK electoral system is another issue altogether.
Howard Smith Reply

April 21, 2026 at 4:04 pm

There is surely an adage that no matter the problem, or who caused it, you can be sure it’s the Labour Party’s fault.

These debts were run up by Conservative boroughs under a Conservative government. And despite inheriting a wrecked economy, this Labour government has already provided £500 million for Woking, with strong hints that further bailouts will come, as they surely will.

Where is the outrage at the Conservatives for getting us to this place?

Howard Smith Is a Labour Party borough councillor and candidate for the West Surrey Council election
Brian Creese Reply

April 21, 2026 at 5:51 pm

Since I moved to Guildford 16 years ago GBC has been run either by the Conservatives or Lib Dems or Lib Dems in coalition with R4GV.

The County Council has been run by the Tories for all that time and we have had a Conservative Government for 14 of those years.

The state of local authority funding is indeed a scandal but The Dragon’s determination to blame the Labour Party is staggering. You fail to mention that the Government has provided an initial £0.5 billion to mitigate Woking’s debt, and one reason for GBC keeping out of debt was the Government’s extra generous funding to alleviate the levels of deprivation in Guildford.

Who created the debt? Who created the mechanism to create that debt?

We know the answer to both these questions is the Conservatives, yet the Dragon seems to feel the blame lies with Labour. Local government reorganisation is decades overdue but will provide more accountable, more efficient, more effective local governance.

The debt is a Tory disgrace, but hopefully once assets are disposed and efficiencies kick in we will see a better system deliver better services in Guildford and across West Surrey.

Brian Creese, is a Labour Candidate for Worplesdon in the West Surrey Council election.
Tristan Irwin Reply

April 22, 2026 at 10:17 am

The key part of the Labour manifesto is as follows:

“We will ensure those places have the strong governance arrangements, capacity, and capability to deliver, providing central support
where needed.”

Does saddling a newly constituted authority with the expected level of debt leave them with any capacity or capability to deliver? We already see the failings in Woking, Birmingham, etc.

Vague commitments of central support, over and above the delivered financial support, don’t exactly give confidence given the amount of pressure already piling on public finances generally.