Madam, – As a former member of a local council the current debate on “Restructuring Local Government” (Editorial, July 26) sounds like moving or, in this case, reducing, the deckchairs on the Titanic. But the debate so far only deals with administrative efficiency – something to which we should all aspire in personal, business and even public life.
It does not deal with the structure (or purpose) of local government. Despite all the “infrastructure” of local government in every town, city and county in the country, we have, in fact, very little local government. For the most part we have local administration of national policy with most of the funding ring-fenced to deliver the national requirement.
Not until we have a proper, sustainable source of funding for local government can local councils properly plan to provide for the real needs of the people who live in their own areas. These needs vary from area to area and cannot be satisfied by the “one-size-fits-all” parameters of national policy.
Let Government deal with national issues – health, education, national roads etc – and let properly-funded local government deal with local issues. If we did this then we could probably achieve real local democracy. Then we could probably save even more money by “restructuring” national government too. – Yours, etc,