11/05/2007

Unitary vision for Norfolk is revealed

I have it on good authority that only two options are now being considered when it comes to the revised unitary status for Norfolk.

It has been revealed to councils that there will be either a single unitary Norfolk County or a three authority option with Norwich, Broadland and South Norfolk being merged to form one authority, North Norfolk and Great Yarmouth another and Breckland and Kings Lynn the third.

This will of course lead to some really unwieldy authorities with no natural centre or sense of community. Quite what Wells Next the Sea has to do with Hopton On Sea (they must be 50 miles apart by road), I don't know, but they will both be in the new North Norfolk/Great Yarmouth Unitary Authority, whilst Foulsham, right on the border of North Norfolk, will be lumped on with places like Diss, right on the Suffolk Border. Absolutely crazy !

Of course the easiste solution would be to scrap the existing boprders of all the authorities and reconstitute borders to they make sense. Also, the authorities should ignore County Boundaries. After all, if they are scrapping County council's what is their obsession with keeping county bounaries ? Great Yarmouth has much in common with Lowestoft and Waveney, but because this authority is in Suffolk and Great Yarmouth in Norfolk they cannot be merged. Another amazingly daft situation.

It is a shame, when there is no desire or public outcry for a local government re-organisation that this is happening at all, but it is perhaps a sign of this government's obsession with tinkering with what is not important rather than actually dealing with the big issues of the day.

2 comments:

IanPJ said...

Nick,

I am surprised that you still blog as though England and its various counties should be dealing with politics as they did 15 years ago.

Where honest councillors did things for the benefit of the people who voted them into office, and that their office meant that they could deal with local problems, planning, environmental issues, housing, roads and everything else that we would expect of a local authority.

Those days have gone.

England is being carved up acording to the European plan.
Firstly into Regions, and within those regions into unitary authorities. All of which will become unelected.

At the regional level, those plans are well developed, and the RDA's now control what happens in terms of education, employment, environment, roads, hospitals, etc and the local authorities are now told how to deliver those services, mostly through partner agencies and quango's which eat up the local authority budgets.

Councils now only have sway over approximately 5-15 pct of their overall budgets, the rest is already spent for them by the RDA's.

For your region, the East of England RDA, perhaps you should read their Business Plan for the 5 year period ending 2008.

http://www.englandsrdas.com/filestore/Corporate_Plans/eecp.pdf

It makes for interesting reading, but one thing that comes through all of the spin, corporate speak and social ideas is that local politics is dead.

It does not matter any longer whether you are a Tory, Liberal or Labour, local politics is dead.

England no longer officially exists, only Scotland, N.Ireland, Wales and the regions.

What you read in that document is the Common Purpose. Understand that you and I and every other voter will have no say in how the RDA's rule their regions.

Local politics is dead, what you see on the ground is now just theatre.

Anonymous said...

"This will of course lead to some really unwieldy authorities with no natural centre or sense of community."

It depends on what you expect from an authority. The existing NCC delievrs approx 80% of services in each locality now.

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