Polly Toynbee is correct to point out the foolishness of a massive local government reorganisation, given other priorities (Is No 10 seeking its own destruction? Why else would it botch its council plans and hand a victory to Farage?, 18 February).
What she does not mention is that this reorganisation will lead to a large increase in inequality. The district councils that are being abolished are rising from the ashes as town and parish councils and, unlike other councils, they can set their own precept and cannot be capped. The largest town councils have budgets of more than £5m and more than 124 parish councils have budgets of over £1m. These councils tend to be in the wealthier suburban and rural areas, and can protect their residents from austerity, unlike residents of large, disadvantaged urban areas.
If you live in an area with a parish council, you will have a good library, open spaces and playgrounds will be well maintained, and you will have a thriving youth club. If you do not, your library will have closed and your playground will be covered in glass where the teenagers drink on a Saturday night following the closure of their youth club.
The government is giving grants to disadvantaged areas, but they will revert to their previous state within a few years due to a lack of local government funding. Despite the warm words from the chancellor, the cuts continue.
David Kennedy
Menston, West Yorkshire
• The government seems bent on replacing one broken system with another. Local authorities have two broad functions. One is to deliver services equitably, efficiently and economically. The other is to be the living, beating heart of the communities they serve, offering local leadership and advocacy. It is, of course, a question of balance. Councils need to be big enough to be efficient, but small enough to care. Governments do not seem to understand that.
Unitary councils are certainly more publicly relatable than the two-tier system. But in choosing a population baseplate of around 500,000, this government has made it clear that any concept of local responsiveness has been abandoned in favour of an ill-conceived search for savings. It is no better than planning on the back of a fag packet.
Two “super councils”, as proposed where I live, will simply be too large to be responsive to the needs of such a large and diverse range of towns and smaller population centres. Perversely, it will also be too small to justify a combined mayoral authority, because it is not an economic entity on its own. The proposals represent another centralising nail in the coffin of local government.
Of course, if you just want your bins collected, none of that matters. But as a former three-time council chief executive, I pray for another U-turn.
Bernard Quoroll
Guildford, Surrey
• Why Labour is wasting energy on an unnecessary reform of local government is, as Polly Toynbee points out, puzzling. A cynic might suggest that the reason is something scarcely mentioned in the debate: larger authorities with fewer councillors representing local interests offer more scope for the kind of large-scale planning that is needed to take forward the government’s ambitious growth strategy.
Westminster finds local council opposition to new runways, roads, railways, housing estates, power stations and so on a nuisance. Maybe local government reorganisation is driven by a desire to weaken it.
Peter Taylor-Gooby
Canterbury
• Polly Toynbee has hit the local government reorganisation nail on the head. As a senior county council officer, I went through the reorganisation in the 1990s. Far from creating a more rational system, it resulted in a hotchpotch of new authorities, some of which struggled to establish sound services, and a puzzling set of changes to county councils. The process took up huge amounts of time and money, and diverted attention from planning and delivering good services into sorting out thousands of details such as changed boundaries, contracts and responsibility for future liabilities (not unlike Brexit).
The adage that form should follow function seemed to be less important than working on the assumption that reorganisation was an easy panacea. Looking at exactly what needs doing and seeing how well you could do it through minimal organisational change makes more sense – less exciting, but the public needs good services, not political excitement.
Andrew Seber
Winchester
• My district council, East Devon, is due to be abolished in the name of “efficiency” some 50 years after it was created from an efficiency bonfire of urban and rural councils. The district only consumes 7% of the tax it collects from me, so I see little scope for savings. All the local services it manages – maintaining electoral rolls, running elections, dealing with household waste, street cleaning, local planning, collecting council tax etc – are essential. The only certainty is that I will have fewer councillors to turn to.
There is no consensus on how district councils should be reorganised in Devon, and my fear is that rural areas will be cast adrift from the inherently more efficient urban ones. As for mayors, even Andy Burnham might struggle to make himself known in a county that is 70 miles wide and 70 miles deep, with little public transport.
David Daniel
Budleigh Salterton, Devon
• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
