Surrey is among the first of 39 councils wanting to be part of the first tranche of devolution discussions with the Government.
So we could have a Mayor in role by 2027!
And that newly elelected Mayor could (White Paper page 9) will be among those charged with delivering 1.5m new homes, many of which will be in the South East, including Surrey and ‘Your Waverley.
Surrey is the only council looking to reorganise and establish a strategic authority on the same footprint. With a population of 1.2 million, and it has told the government it is working towards this.
“the development of a mayoral strategic authority for the whole of Surrey. However, it is “mindful this falls slightly below the 1.5 million expected for mayoral regions and would engage concurrently with neighbouring authorities on other options over an even larger footprint.”
So there you have it, folks: Are we, the ratepayers of Surrey and Waverley, going to end up with decisions being made for us by, say – Sussex or, perhaps, Somerset or even the sodding Solent. Why not – take us off-piste to the Isle of Wight!
Because Emparor Oliver wants more! Please, Gov., will you write off my billions of pounds of debts? While you are at it, could you write off Woking’s, Guildford’s and anyone else’s, for that matter? Then, please give me a clean sheet so I can rack up even more debt with disastrous property acquisitions and developments, like Brightwells Yard in Farnham. This will likely finish off Crest Nicholson PLC, which has lost £20 million and counting on the project.
Surrey is one of only four councils clamouring to become a Unitary authority. This means taking over the responsibilities for everything the existing 11 borough and district local authorities do.
So you name it, and the new wannabe behemoth authority will do everything or not!
LSA local government Minister Jim McMahon said the number of participants in the process would be unlimited as long as the bids were “credible.” The deadline was last Friday, and Surrey met it. However, a few weeks ago, Minister McMahon said no elections for county authorities in May would be cancelled. Now, he has changed his mind.
Surrey wants to cancel the election as it is fearful that it could lose Tory control, and the spectre of Reform and Liberal Democrat popularity has grown exponentially in the county.
It argues.
Speed is of the essence.“
The Executive was entirely behind the Leader’s proposal, including Alfold Cllr Kevin De-Anus, who wasn’t impressed with some comments made earlier in the day by some of his colleagues at a full council meeting.
You can listen to the debate on the link below or Waverley Borough and SCC Cllr Kevin DeAnus, webcast at 0.25.31.
https://surreycc.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/943525?force_language_code=en_GB
How will Councillors be held personally accountable for loosing billions of council taxpayers money, which could have been spent on repairing Surrey’s crumbling infrastructure? Councillors responsible to the public for financial prudence often failed to understand the Governments Statutory Investment Guidance, especially the requirement for liquidity. Perhaps some councillors have never heard of this guidance yet alone read and understood it? Conservative governments gave local authorities too much discretion to gamble public money without personal accountability, which delivered financial disasters. It looks like the current Labour government are heading in the same direction.
When Surrey CC was requested to provide their financial risk assessment for their Brightwells “subsidy,” no response was provided. The public needs financially competent local authorities not unitary authorities.
Surrey is NOT just one of four looking for unitary status. All un-reorganised counties will need to have plans drawn up by the autumn of this year, whether in the current bunch or not.
WW thinks you may have misunderstood, or perhaps we did not make it clearer enough. Surrey is in the first tranche. No suggestion that is one of four. In th sub-headline it clearly state it is one of 39 seeking to be in the first tranche.
It does seem to be a good plan to have a combined Authority with a much larger area to consider for more housing and a Council less dominated by members from one or two towns. Decisions would be more rationally decided by the larger Authority on the best locations bearing in mind infrastructure etc and less by the “ not near us” mindset and let’s “Dump the new houses at Dunsfold”.
BUT I suspect that people living south of Guildford feel that places north of M25 are very much more suburban to London and have less in common with them than people living in West Sussex and Hampshire.