SCC votes for improved two-tier working 24th January

Tuesday’s Surrey County Council meeting saw members of all parties vote against the idea of a unitary SCC and instead vote for co-operation with the borough and district councils, as well as other public sector bodies in the county including Surrey PCT and Surrey Police.

Introducing the debate on The Future of Surrey Public Services, Council Leader Nick Skellett remarked that after considering the merits and demerits of pursuing the option of a unitary SCC he had concluded that whilst “It is pretty obvious that if you remove one tier of local government there will be savings”, this would not necessarily be in the interests of the people of Surrey.

He also stated his belief that no reorganisation of local government and democracy in Surrey should be undertaken without the people of Surrey being consulted first, commenting: “If we should ever want to proceed we would need to clearly understand what people in Surrey want”.

He went on to criticise the Government’s handling of local government reform, describing the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill, and preceding White Paper as ‘ill-conceived’ and said that reform should be evidence-based and done properly.

“We believe this bill with its invitation for competitive bids for unitary status within a short time scale is a wholly inappropriate way for changing the constitution of shire England. It compares badly with a Royal Commission like the one led by Lord Redcliffe-Maud. If the government of the day feels there is a need to review local government it should be done properly with sufficient time taken to research and consult on levels of representation and types of organisation”.

Other speakers in the debate agreed with the Executive’s recommendations, which were passed with all-party support.

Dr. Andrew Povey referred to the proposed changes to local government as “176 pages of waffle”, and felt that the government was failing to address the ‘real issues’ of concern to local people, whilst Tony Rooth pointed out that the reforms were being driven by the government’s desire to cut funding for local government, rather than a desire to improve it. He pointed to the problems in the health service as evidence that reforms driven by a desire to save money, rather than to improve a service, do not always produce the best results.

David Hodge said that he was pleased that SCC would not be pursuing unitary status, and agreed with the Mr. Skellett that there should be a Royal Commission set up to look at any proposed reform of local government, and Christine Stevens called for officers and members of all Surrey’s local authorities to work together to help improve services whilst dealing with the under-funding of Surrey by the present government.