20 Mar 2025
The leader of SADC’s Greens and Independents group has accused fellow councillors of failing to stand up and be counted in opposition to local government reform.
Cllr Simon Grover was speaking after all 11 Herts councils – together with the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC) – announced a joint interim response to the Government outlining a number of initial options for the reorganisation of local government structures in the county.
Their submission sets out a number of options for further consideration, ranging from one to four unitary councils providing all services.
It also includes early thinking on how each option could support devolution, improve services, deliver value for money and maintain strong links to communities.
But the councils have differing views on the options set out and no decisions are being made at this stage, and they will be working to collage and analyse further evidence for each option.
SADC leader Cllr Paul de Kort said: ““There is still considerable work to be undertaken before a decision should be made on the best option for restructuring local government in Hertfordshire.
“We are keeping an open mind until we consult with our residents as well as important stakeholders such as local businesses, other public agencies, parish councils, voluntary groups and charities. Their views must be heard and taken into account.
“There is also a need for much more guidance from the Government about many crucial aspects of the restructuring they are demanding.
“We need to gather all this information, discuss and analyse it, before we can throw our weight behind one particular option.
“The last reorganisation has lasted more than 50 years and this current one may well do the same, so it is vital we get this right and do not rush any decision.”
But Cllr Grover has called for firm action in opposition to the proposals.
He said: “St Albans council should be bold about opposing the proposed abolition of our local government structures. I have heard other councillors say they don’t like it, yet we are not telling the Government that. We should be clear that we are not convinced that any benefits that have been proposed by the Government outweigh the huge disadvantages.
“Those disadvantages are numerous. First, there’s the whole question of whether the reorganisation will save any money at all. Nobody really knows. Second, we know that residents will be against this. Any polling that’s been done has shown that residents are against bigger councils, because they understand the value of local representation. Undoubtedly, it reduces democracy, that’s just an objective fact.
“Third, there will be huge transition costs for both local government and national government at a time when there is no money in the pot. Yet suddenly we can supposedly afford a multi-billion pound pointless transformation for local government. Then there is the massive amount of work involved for our officers and the civil service, which means they can’t be doing other things, which should be higher priority.
“We’ve seen that other councils around the country are coming out and explicitly saying that they oppose this proposal. Doing so is not radical – it’s a perfectly reasonable response to a White Paper that affects us as a council.
“We need to stand up and be counted and have our voice heard on this. We need to say to the minister that this council is opposed to these proposals, at the very least in their current form.”
Speaking to the St Albans Times recently, Cllr de Kort seemed to agree with much of what Cllr Grover was saying.
Cllr de Kort openly says he is not a great believer in centralisation, which is a fundamental difference between the Lib Dems and Labour, and argues that the new Devolution Bill is actually taking power away from a local level instead of providing more local funding.
“In the district, we collect around £55m in council tax, but we only get back £2.85m. If a higher part of the tax base could be spent locally them it changes the funding dynamic, but that’s not the way they want to do it.
“They want to hold the money centrally and then distribute it to where they see the problems are, and sadly that’s often a marginal constituency. When they did studies about where the most of the last Government’s Levelling Up money went it seemed to go to marginal Tory constituencies ahead of the most deprived areas, because usually they were safe Labour seats.”
While the move towards unitary authorities continuing to gather pace, he said there remains a lack of transparency in the process.
“Herts county council are supposedly talking to a couple of other local councils, and I’m sure one of them’s Buckinghamshire, but they won’t tell us who they are. It’s awful that there’s no transparency and people are just playing a game.
“But I think residents across the county don’t care at all, what they really care about is service provision. They actually really care is not who collected their bins, but did somebody collect their bins?
“Was the leisure centre open? Was it reasonable? Was there a modernised one? Is there one reasonably near me? What do my parks look like? What do my play areas look like? Are they well refurbished? That’s what they care about. The danger is it’ll get worse in two different ways through what the Government is doing.
“One is the resource issue, and the other is funding, because there is a real question mark over what savings there are going to be. The one clear saving is the number of councillors, because it looks like there will probably be only a third of the number of councillors in the new system.
“But will that councillor really know a particular area of town, a specific ward, in any real detail? The other issue is that you’re effectively professionalising councillors, and then you have to pay them a salary to reflect that, or you offer them an allowance and the diversity just dribbles away as you end up losing people who can’t commit the time in the same way they used to.”
