Call me a hopeless romantic if you will, but I have to admit that I’ve grown fond of local government in a way that, had you asked me two decades ago, I would have snorted with derision. Perhaps that’s the difference that being a councillor at the very lowest tier of local government makes, even though my ambitions at any higher level are, at best, dormant these days.
Suffolk currently has three tiers of local government - County, Borough/District and Town/Parish. Not so long ago, we had seven local authorities forming the second tier - Babergh (think South Suffolk), Forest Heath (Newmarket and Mildenhall), Ipswich, Mid Suffolk (Stowmarket and the hinterland), St Edmundsbury (Bury St Edmunds and Haverhill), Suffolk Coastal (Aldeburgh and Felixstowe) and Waveney (Lowestoft). All just a bit too small to be effective, not entirely well run and drifting towards obsolescence.
As the squeeze on local government finance began to hurt, it became clear that amalgamation was an easy way to cut costs, with Forest Heath and St Edmundsbury eventually merging to form West Suffolk, and Suffolk Coastal and Waveney merging to form East Suffolk. That left Ipswich, whose Labour leadership had no desire to be subsumed into a larger, likely Conservative leaning authority, and Babergh and Mid Suffolk who, having gone down the road of merging back office functions, were unable to persuade the voters of Babergh that full merger was acceptable. And that’s where we are now.
The Government, having indicated a desire to create new, larger authorities, covering a population of 300,000 to 400,000, imply a future of two unitary authorities, East Suffolk and West Suffolk, as the alternative - Greater Ipswich and Rural Suffolk - is likely to please nobody much. And, in truth, given the likely financial savings, it seems like a logical, possibly inevitable, outcome.
There is an irony there, in that, until 1974, we had... East Suffolk and West Suffolk. Below that, as the map indicates, we had a curious miscellany of County Boroughs, Municipal Boroughs, Urban Districts and Rural Districts, with Creeting St Peter falling within the Gipping Rural District. Prior to that, the 1934 local government reorganisation saw the merger of the East Stow (including Creeting St Peter) and Bosmere and Claydon Rural Districts. East Stow wasn’t big, with a population of about 7,000. Heavens, I could have been a councillor there...
In truth, I probably tend towards the view that a coming together of smaller authorities is likely to free up resources for public services rather than administration, although that view might not be wholly shared by local Liberal Democrats. On the one hand, larger wards take local councillors further away from those that they represent, whilst on the other, how many people can identify their local councillor(s) anyway? The romantic in me appreciates the personal touch, the pragmatist the financial benefits that economies of scale bring.
We’d probably end up with two Conservative-led authorities but, given that all but Ipswich are currently Conservative-led, what is there to lose? And, if our ultimate goal is to protect existing services and, one day, provide new ones, then the financial savings matter - the Golden Age of local government finance is receding into the rear view mirror (if it ever existed).
The trick will be to find ways of including the Towns and Parishes in a new structure where powers are devolved to those Councils that have the scope and/or wish to take responsibility, probably the Towns at first with larger Parishes following thereafter. Here in Creeting St Peter, I suspect that little will change - how much responsibility could a village of 275 souls realistically take on? - but even here, there might be things we would want to assume control over one day.
Unfortunately, regardless of how you organise local government, you need competent councillors to set the strategy, monitor delivery and assume responsibility, and the evidence is that it’s getting harder to attract good people. In Mid Suffolk, Liberal Democrats have been fortunate in that those who have sought election and been successful have generally been solidly committed to the communities they represent, and of enough talent to hold administrations to account. But it gets harder every year to attract fresh blood - a lot of work is required to win an election, and even the local Conservatives find it difficult to find enough candidates, despite the expectation that they will get elected on the basis of their blue rosette.
So, less councillors might make things easier for a while, and buy time sufficient to make the life of a local councillor that little bit more attractive, a little bit more accessible.
We’ll see though. An attempted reorganisation just before the 2010 General Election ran into the sand when Labour threw their hands in the air and suggested that it was all too difficult. Persuading a bunch of Conservative councillors that they should accept abolition quietly may be equally problematic...
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