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Plans for Wiltshire County Council “ill-conceived”
Wiltshire County Council’s bid to become a unitary authority has been undermined by a report exposing “fundamental flaws” in the proposals.
Professor Michael Chisholm, a local government expert from Cambridge University, was commissioned by Kennet, West Wiltshire and Salisbury district councils to examine in detail the case for a unitary authority to govern the entire county.
Already forwarded to the government, his independent research highlights little support for a single council among locals and discrepancies both in the financial case and plans for area governance.
The transition to a unitary authority would “cost in excess of £21 million”, according to the report, while grants to the tune of £1.3 million would be lost.
“The maths just doesn’t add up,” said councillor Lionel Grundy, chairman of Kennet District Council’s Resources Executive Committee.
“The county council argue that a single authority would achieve savings, but we are finding massive overstatements in their assumed savings on services and significant underestimates of the costs of transition.”
In this case, according to exhaustive independent research, a unitary approach to local county governance would simply not be practical.
