Councillor Simon Grover, leader of the Green & Independent group on the Council, has spoken out against the proposed reorganisation of local government, that would see powers centralised and local representation abolished.
Simon told a Council committee: “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.”