Scrapping the County Council

Written by David Chappell and published in Letters to the Bury Free Press on Sun 30th Mar 2008

This restructuring is going ahead with St Edmundsbury and other local

councils being abolished along with the County, but people need to speak out

and contact the Boundary Committee to let their views be known.

The idea of having one Unitary Council across Suffolk is really a

non-starter as it would be just too big both in terms of population and

geographical size. This should be taken as an opportunity to synchronising

our local authority boundaries with the parliamentary boundaries, with the

possible exception of whatever bits might be in a Greater Ipswich. To

replace 4 district councillors and one county councillor with one unitary

councillor would probably create to great a burden on that councillor

tempting as it might seem to get rid of as many politicians as possible! We

really need to streamline public administration services and this

restructuring will achieve that. However it should also be taken as an

opportunity to empower local people with enhanced powers given to Parish and

Town Councils, including planning. With perhaps Planning Powers being given

to a groups of rural parish councils to make it financially effective.

We could also enhance the influence and value of the unitary councillors by

giving them significant locality budgets of say £50,000 to spend directly as

they saw the need in their local area cutting away a lot of the bureaucracy

that can lead to long delays for relatively simple projects as community

halls, village parking, and other facilities. It would also mean that future

candidates for council positions could see that they could make a real

impact by getting involved, and voters would see their Councillors having

real powers to deal with the problems communities have.

With the fall off in public participation in elections we need to put in

place a system that has the support and confidence of the people served by

this process. One way of doing this would be to have two councillors elected

by a system of proportional representation so that people had confidence

their vote was not wasted and their overall views were reflected in the make

up of the Council.