Despite the challenges facing households across the country, particularly thanks to Labour’s disastrous budget, you might think the Government would drop plans to scrap local councils in favour of massive remote ones. Unfortunately, they are ploughing on, and ultimately, it’s us who’ll lose out.
What is being proposed by Angela Rayner is a top-down reorganisation of local government forced on communities. This could see Wokingham Borough disappear into a monster council covering a vast area, with the wishes of our small towns and villages, like Earley, Woodley or Twyford, ignored in favour of larger, urban areas, and Council Tax paid by our residents potentially spent on services in areas such as Reading and Slough and other big towns.
The Labour Government and its supporters, including in our area, have tried to promote supposed ‘benefits’ of their plan to swallow up Wokingham Borough, which they try to convince us is devolution. They simply aren’t credible.
Jim McMahon, the Minister of State responsible for Local Government, has said it will put “power into the hands of local people that know their areas best”. This is laughable.
Wokingham Borough was created with a desire to remove the inefficiencies of duplication from district and county councils, and ensure decisions were made as close as possible to local people. The kind of council the Government wants to create could see people’s local areas run from Council offices significant distances away. Councillors and officers would make decisions about areas they’ve never been to, of which they know nothing.
This also has a serious effect on participation in democracy. Residents who want to visit Council offices to raise an issue or attend a meeting would face journeys of an hour or more, especially if they depend on public transport.
While residents could at least watch a meeting online, you need to attend a meeting in person as an elected councillor. Working people could be put off standing for election, knowing they can’t fit travelling such long distances around their job.
The Government ministers who have dreamed up these ideas simply don’t understand the geographical scale needed to meet the population requirements they’ve plucked out of thin air. Hardly surprising given, like Angela Rayner, they tend to represent Labour-run city areas with population densities many times that of Wokingham.
Supporters of the Government’s plans also say it will reduce costs and processes. Part of Labour’s plans could see the creation of a new Mayor, adding a whole new level of bureaucracy. Nor can we expect savings from economy of scale – the needs for social services, for example, will not change just because there is a bigger council. We cannot even expect savings from reducing the number of councillors. When Buckinghamshire scrapped all its local councils in favour of one big council, it ended up with 147 councillors, almost three times the number in Wokingham Borough.
Some people may not remember, but we’ve seen this all before. Berkshire County Council was remote and fixated on larger towns, rather than areas like towns and villages in our area. BCC was scrapped in 1998, with more powers given to smaller councils like Wokingham Borough.
Local Conservatives are strongly opposed to Labour’s plans. We want to keep democracy local. At a Council meeting in January, my proposal to ensure Wokingham Borough would oppose any unfavourable top-down reorganisation was backed by the Council’s Liberal Democrat administration. We will continue fighting against any Labour schemes that would see your local voice lost.
By Cllr Pauline Jorgensen
