Mayor of Chichester: Local government is being changed without our say so!

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I am outraged! My outrage is not so much with the principles of devolution and local government reform but in the manner in which it is being driven and conducted.

To start with, did our newish Labour Government set out quite deliberately to launch their plans for devolution and local government reform on 16 December 2024? In short, when most local authorities were packing up for Christmas. Probably. Such is the contempt for local democracy in central government circles! And this is my first bone of contention.

Briefly, the White Paper (a Government policy document) proposes creating fewer but larger councils with a population of 500,000 or more. For comparison, Chichester District Council is an area with just under 125,000 at the most recent count. Yes, I do understand about the significance of regional matters - although National Highways have yet to sort out issues to do with the A27. But I really do take issue with Central Government on the sheer size of this proposal. Surely, we need more local democracy, not less. The White Paper has fine words about ‘rebalancing power from central government’ and that reform of local government ‘may involve merging district councils with counties to form unitary authorities’. This means District Councils like Chichester may cease to exist. West Sussex County Council has already voted in favour of creating a strategic authority with a mayor by amalgamating with East Sussex and Brighton & Hove. How on earth will a strategic authority with a population of about 1.7 million people guarantee that everyone continues to have a say about what’s important for their communities? And yes, they probably do propose splitting up the two counties and Brighton & Hove into three unitary councils but I would argue there is still a profound democratic deficit here.

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Matters are moving quickly. West Sussex County Council’s Cabinet agreed with indecent haste on Thursday 9 January to advance their cause. A similar decision has been made to combine Hampshire and the Isle of Wight with the cities of Portsmouth and Southampton! Another super-council with over 1.8 million. Will these amalgamations really drive regional devolution and lower costs, as advocated in the White Paper?

This leads me on to my third bone of contention: County Councils all over England, usually Conservative, want to postpone local government elections due in May 2025. They argue that the impending reorganisation of local government in England including the creation of new, larger unitary authorities, and their need to organise for that, means that elections will only get in the way! And to this number must now be added Sussex and the greater Hampshire conurbations. Turkeys and Christmas come to mind!

This brings me to my final issues: regional devolution and lower costs. Yes, local government is a real kaleidoscope of different functions and activities, but I cannot understand how these proposals will reduce costs. Existing County Councils deal with transport, education and social care, while District Councils manage planning, refuse collections, and housing, amongst many other things. All of these have rising costs, especially social care which should be tackled by Central Government and not a unitary council.

There’s been discussion among Chichester’s councillors about where the enlarged unitary councils for Sussex might be located. Will it be Brighton, Horsham, Lewes, or indeed Chichester? Either way, there will have to be area offices in possibly Bognor, Chichester, Crawley, Haywards Heath and Worthing. It will depend on what sort of transactions are undertaken in these offices but the set-up costs, replicated across the country, will be enormous and make it very hard for central government to save money.

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We must not forget parish and town councils which get scarcely a mention in the White Paper! They are part of this country’s history and heritage and have the potential to take some of the burden from District Councils. Larger parish councils such as Chichester, Midhurst, Petworth, East Wittering and Bracklesham, and Selsey in West Sussex, or Burgess Hill, Eastbourne, Haywards Heath, and Lewes in East Sussex could take on additional duties. But they will need to be recompensed for their efforts. And all this will cost money!

To wrap up my thoughts on this sensitive topic. It feels as if we are going back 50 years to the reforms of 1974 that arose from the Redcliffe-Maud report. These changes combined old city and county councils into one unit of local government administration. ‘What goes around comes round’ as the saying goes.

Sarah Quail is a member of both Chichester City Council and Chichester District Council. She is also Mayor of Chichester.

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