Wishing you a healthy and successful 2025!
From a resident’s view, the Government’s so-called ‘devolution’ looks very like centralisation to a region.
The big decisions, such as on housing, transport and the economy, currently made by our districts, counties or unitaries, move up into very few hands with a mayor.
If residents think their current district council is hard to influence, how about something covering an area 10 times as big?
That leaves residents worse off, as these few hands are necessarily less diverse and less representative of the electorate.
The new subsidiary councils would then focus more on delivery of the Government’s objectives.
The LGA’s Independent Group has called for any reorganisation to be a decision by local councils together, not imposed.
Many feel a referendum on such a big decision would be more appropriate, and I put the case for appointed members of the upper strategic authorities to be politically balanced, but this now seems unlikely.
Dissolving and setting up new authorities is not to be under-estimated – the distraction from the delivery of services at a time when we need to be at our sharpest, with a negative impact on countless staff and loss of expertise.
For the sake of democracy, we need to set our path on increasing our numbers at May’s elections, positioning ourselves better for any future changes.