Update From Your Tandridge District Councillor – February 2025
Tandridge District Council Will Be Abolished
What is Changing? Local government is changing. In December, the government issued a new white paper on Local Government. All over the country, local government will be changing, creating large Unitary Authorities. They are called Unitary Authorities because they unite the District or Borough and the County Levels of government. And they will be united under one Strategic Mayoral Authority. The process is called Devolution.
You may have read about Devolution. Local government is on track to be restructured so that it is more uniform and has fewer levels of government. In Surrey, this means that in practice, all District and Borough Councils and the County Council will be abolished and Surrey will be structured into one, two or three Unitary Authorities, with one elected Mayor – the Strategic Authority – above them. The Unitary Authorities would be in charge of service delivery. The Mayoral (Strategic) Authority would be in charge of strategy.
Why is it called Devolution? Devolution means that decision making moves closer to the citizen and is more democratic. Devolution is not new. Moving some powers from the UK government to the national governments in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are examples of Devolution. London as a city has long had many devolved powers (since 1999). In more recent years, other cities followed.
Devolution deals for Counties, Districts and Boroughs are focussed on creating authorities that can operate strategically and financially to drive local economic growth, run policy for developing skills and for managing transport (with some input on rail), and look to create and manage a ‘single pot’ to support local investment as well to deliver the ability to raise additional revenue through financial instruments such as a Mayoral precept.
Who decided to do this with the Counties, Districts and Boroughs? This is a process that started in 2014, under the previous national government. The current government is pressing ahead as rapidly as it can and would like the country to uniformly adopt a political structure of Mayors and Unitary Authorities below them. Some areas are putting themselves forward to be in the first, fast-track wave of restructuring into Unitary Authorities and Mayors.
What about Surrey County Council? Surrey County Council is putting our County forward for the fast-track, and in a few months, we will know if it is to be fast tracked.
Today the County is comprised of 11 Districts and Boroughs with 453 elected District/Borough Councillors across their wards. The County Council itself is comprised of 81 divisions, with 81 elected County Councillors. So, in the County of Surrey, 534 Councillors look after the needs of the roughly 1.2 million residents.
The County Council is responsible for education (schools and youth services), social services, highways management, fire and rescue services, libraries and waste disposal.
The District/Borough Councils are responsible for housing, planning, waste collection and street cleaning, leisure, environmental health, and revenue collection.
As one, two or three Unitary Authorities, each Authority in Surrey will look after the merged responsibilities of the County and District/Borough Councils. The total number of Councillors being mooted is something like 162 across the Authorities, but this is very much subject to determination in the process. Either way, it will be far fewer than the 534 (largely unpaid) Councillors that serve the citizens of Surrey today. It is as yet unclear if there will be any knock-on effects on our Town and Parish Councils. In some reorganisations there has been an impact.
Pros and Cons of Unitary Authorities. It is hard to really call this devolution at the County level, as more is centralised up to County / Unitary Authority and less is devolved down from central government. Setting aside the term devolution, which is something of a misnomer at the County level, there are pros and cons to the Unitary Authority structure.
The Pros include:
– Decreased risk: larger authorities are larger in scale. Scale generally decreases financial risk and enables more efficient borrowing. In the long run, this saves the taxpayer money.
– Strategic Alignment. It is easier to achieve strategic alignment across the county by governing in one larger area. A larger authority (without fragmented districts and boroughs) would mean strategic decisions on how to spur economic growth, and on infrastructure, planning and housing needs, could be taken holistically and potentially more rapidly.
– Some powers held at national level can be devolved to Mayoral Authorities (And their Unitary delivery arm), as has happened in some cities.
The Cons include:
– Government would effectively be largely in two layers – very rare for a western democracy – with no real engagement at very local levels. The country is only one-third parished and Parish Councils have few statutory powers that would enable meaningful engagement with a Unitary Authority and Mayor.
– Democracy and democratic mechanism would therefore be much more remote, with the minimum population level for an area Authority set at 500,000 and the number of Councillors serving people dramatically reduced. Individuals will not be as engaged nor be able to reach their Councillors as easily. Some areas will simply get far less attention and help than they do today. And given the remoteness of the enlarged area (relative to a District or Borough) from many of its citizens, democracy will be less well served.
– Outside urban areas, which by definition face similar issues within their geography, such large minimum population requirements mean very disparate areas with little in common will be pushed into one Authority (e.g. large towns, rural villages and farms and semi-rural villages will all be in one huge Authority). On the 80/20 rule (80% of outcomes results from 20% of causes), the big issues will be dealt, with leaving many needs and issues unaddressed across such a broad geography. Some areas will likely get very little attention.
In short, the principles of governability and democracy that government Divisions must fulfil, as enshrined in the Local Government Act, will be much harder to achieve. But strategic alignment across larger areas and, at least in theory and perhaps practice, financial stability and lower costs may be easier to achieve.
What has been proposed for Surrey? It is not yet known whether Surrey will form one, two or three Unitary Authorities. Guidance from government is that there should be a minimum 500,000 population per Unitary Authority. This would suggest Surrey will most likely be one or two Authorities, however some exceptions to minimum population requirements may be made (and many have been in the past).
It is also unclear if Surrey must merge with other areas outside the County on a strategic basis, as the Mayoral Strategic area has been designated as a minimum population of 1.5 million people and Surrey has 1.2 million people. Again, exceptions can and have been made.
A possible scenario is that Surrey will encompass one strategic Mayoral Authority with two unitary authorities below it. And there are also many proponents for reorganising into three authorities. How Surrey’s Districts and Boroughs are split into Unitary Authorities remains to be seen. A North and South scenario is possible, as is an East and West scenario. And there is much work to be done on the financial structure as some Districts (notably NOT Tandridge) have severe debt problems that may be spread across the new Authorities, borne by all citizens therein.
Surrey is proposing itself to be in the first wave of government restructuring and as such on the 8th of May the leader of Surrey County Council wrote to the Minister (Jim McMahon, Minister for Local Government and English Devolution) to ask him to lay the legislation to cancel the May 2025 Surrey County Council elections with a view to holding elections for the new Unitary Authorities in May 2026. If Surrey is selected for the initial wave of reorganisation, which should be communicated by the end of January, then the initial reorganisation proposals are due in March and the final proposal in May. If Surrey is not selected for the first, fast-tracked wave of reorganisation, then the restructuring will happen at a slower pace, but before 2030.
If you would like to discuss this in more detail or receive a more personal update, please do get in touch on email or by phone. I can be reached at cllr.deborah.sherry@tandridge.gov.uk or 07779134797.
District Councillor Deborah Sherry