How to divide Surrey’s new local government

Bins. Parking. Potholes. When you ask most voters what their council does, few of the responses, I must admit, sound very sexy compared with the headline-grabbing national issues of immigration and foreign affairs. As a borough councillor, though, for me, these services represent the bread and butter of what government should deliver. Being the things that people use most from day to day, they are services residents should take for granted.

The way key decisions are made on these services will be undergoing radical change over the next few years. In Surrey, the process has already started in what will be the first county to undergo Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) ahead of the government’s devolution of powers to directly elected strategic mayors in every part of England.

What does LGR mean for us?

At the core of the new Labour government’s proposals is making sure more decisions are made closer to the people they impact. The new directly elected Mayor of Surrey will take on some of Westminster’s powers over health, the local economy, planning and transport that will truly serve Surrey residents, rather than just treating it as one of London’s peripheries. These newly elected mayors will have to co-deliver these services as part of a Combined Authority with the leaders of the reorganised councils they cover.

To this end, the Local Government Minister Jim McMahon announced that the government will bring an end to the confusing and siloed two-tier system of district and county councils where they remain. This means that all the local services in your area will be delivered by a single council that has a joined-up approach. No longer will we be burdened by the lack of communication between district and county councils when delivering the same functions in planning, for example, which have driven my council colleagues from all parties up the wall countless times.

Two contrasting proposals

These new Mayors will have to cover the areas of at least two councils to form a combined authority that they will lead. This means Surrey’s local government must be divided geographically, and the debate about how this is done is where local residents come in.

The Conservative-controlled Surrey County Council have put forward their proposal to split Surrey into two, East and West, whereas nine of Surrey’s eleven lower-tier districts and boroughs have proposed a three-way split with North, East and West Surrey councils.

The drawback of a two-council system

Whilst I encourage you to do your own reading around both proposals, I can’t help but feel the County Council’s two unitary authority approach undermines the point of all this reorganisation, that being localism and devolving decision making closer to residents, all for what are relatively marginal projected savings in day-to-day running costs. What it ignores in the finances is that their proposal lumps all of the most debt-laden districts into one council, two of which, Woking and Spelthorne, have had statutory interventions initiated by central government. The County Council’s proposed West Surrey will have its long-term viability questioned from the start.

The entire raison d’être of the devolution reforms is to practically move power into the hands of the communities that need it to make the whole country more prosperous. That will only work when local communities feel like they have an ongoing stake in these new structures to begin with. Not only would two mega-councils serve huge populations of upwards of 600k each, but what resident of suburban Staines would feel like rural councillors in, say, Haslemere or Godalming were acting in their interests when making decisions on their local services in a council chamber that’s nearly an hour’s drive away? Flip it the other way around if you must, but there’s no doubt that three smaller councils would have better links to a more empowered group of residents who felt like they were being served by a council that covered the areas they lived, worked, shopped or socialised in.

Local government relies on local community, and the three-council proposal keeps the districts and boroughs that are closely linked closer together. The two-council proposal would instead drive an administrative boundary between the boroughs of Spelthorne, Runnymede and Elmbridge; linked by common demography and issues arising from their sharing the banks of the Thames. Splitting these similar communities will detract from the strategic thinking needed to deliver on the government’s radical devolution principles.

Have your say

Whilst the existing councils have already had their say on their preferences about this ongoing debate, the government are running a public consultation on the two proposals until Tuesday, the 5^th of August. Local government in your area is now at one of the biggest forks in the road since the last time it was reorganised in the early 70’s, so I urge you to have your say now.

Cai Parry is a Labour & Co-operative Borough Councillor for Chertsey Riverside in Runnymede. Outside of his role on Runnymede’s first non-Conservative administration in over 50 years, he works in public affairs and policy, focusing on adult social care after campaigning as a student for young carers and on the environment.