PLANS to revamp council areas could see residents forced to say goodbye to local decision making, the leader of Lichfield District Council has warned.
The Government outlined the proposals to do away with two-tier areas such as Staffordshire earlier this year.
It would mean the system of separate district and county councils would end with new unitary authorities replacing them.
Ministers have now given local authorities six weeks to draw up initial proposals which must see a single body representing a minimum of 500,000 residents.
Cllr Doug Pullen, leader of Lichfield District Council said that the move will create significant change for local people:
“For 50 years, the system of having a district council, based around a geography meaningful to voters and making decisions about the locality, as well as a much larger county council, with the ability to make large-scale infrastructure investments across the region, has served residents relatively well.
“The new Labour Government and their Whitehall civil servants are now taking a very wide and incredibly stiff broom to sweep those arrangements away, with a decree coming from London that by 21st March all two-tier authorities must have submitted interim plans for re-organisation, with final plans being submitted by November.
“Those plans must include suggestions as to how district and county councils can be abolished and replaced with new super-councils with a minimum of 500,000 residents.
“That will mean goodbye to local decision making. Planning applications for Little Aston could now be decided in Stafford, a decision on improving a park in Burntwood could be voted on by a councillor from Kinver and investment in Lichfield’s high street could be vetoed in Burton.”
Local Government Minister Jim McMahon told councillors that the changes were a “once in a generation” opportunity to put local government on a more sustainable footing.
But Cllr Pullen said that the scale of the change and the one-size-fits-all approach meant issues would arise.
“Of course, the multi-tiered system of local government isn’t perfect and I’m not opposed to combining all three tiers into one.
“But the obsession by civil servants and Labour Ministers with an entirely arbitrary bare minimum size of 500,000 residents is deeply problematic.
“Such a number may work in a major city such as Manchester or London, but makes no sense at all in sparsely populated areas such as southern Staffordshire.
“Local democracy appears to have been entirely missed out of this step too – think the local system works quite well, and you don’t want this in your local area? Tough, because the Minister has made it very clear that if we don’t agree, he will legislate to force it.”
Cllr Pullen said that despite his opposition to the scale of change, he will work to make the best of the situation.
He said:
“I for one will be doing what comes as second-nature to every local authority leader I know – which is to roll our sleeves up and deal with the challenge put in front of us by national government.
“We’ll work closely with other councils to ensure we can get the very best possible shape of local government within the parameters we’ve been set.
“But rather like a Boxing Day game of Monopoly with the in-laws – you don’t really want to play, you certainly don’t like their set of rules, none of the finances make sense and you’re secretly hoping someone is going to flip the board and end the game so you can get back to doing something useful.”
