Plans for a ‘super council’ to run Buckinghamshire take another step forward

Plans for a ‘super council’ for Buckinghamshire took another step forward when the Cabinet members of Buckinghamshire County Council voted unanimously to submit the business case for a new single council for Buckinghamshire to Government.

County councillors will vote on whether to submit the business case for a new single council for Buckinghamshire to Government on Thursday 22nd September 2016.

The plans include the abolition of all five county and district authorities in Buckinghamshire to be replaced by a new Buckinghamshire Council giving an estimated saving of more than £18m a year for tax payers.

Cabinet members who unanimously backed the proposals at a special meeting on Monday 19th September 2016 said the move would also empower local communities, simplify things for residents and give Bucks one strong voice on regional infrastructure issues.

The Leader of Buckinghamshire County Council, Martin Tett, will now write to the four district councils seeking consensus from them on the conclusions of the draft business case.

On Thursday 22nd September 2016 a meeting of the full Council will be asked to approve the business case and authorise Martin to submit it to the Department for Communities and Local Government for a decision.

The Leader of the Council, Martin Tett, who represents the Little Chalfont and Amersham Common division, said: ‘This is a proposal to Government to disband all five councils and replace them with one and completely new council. It would cover the geography of the county but would actually be the best of the heritage of all the preceding ones and hopefully bring new innovations as well.

We can deliver better services and better value for people and that’s not by cutting troops on the front line. We don’t need 250 councillors for Buckinghamshire – that’s about half the size of the entire House of Commons to run Buckinghamshire. We can do it with less, we can do it with about 98.

We don’t need chief executives for five councils. We don’t need senior staff or finance departments or HR departments for five councils, we can do it once rather than five times.

This is a strong proposition and I hope desperately that our colleagues in the districts will work with us to try and find a degree of consensus around this proposal. I will certainly be writing to them straight after this meeting to make that offer to them.‘