Town councils can be part of solution

To some extent I share Dave Wilson’s scepticism about the likely benefits of merging the existing east Kent district councils and centralising their current functions (Councils Are Not Businesses, Letters and Opinion, Kentish Gazette, July 14).

I agree that this could make some services more remote.

However, I believe it could be a different matter if we were talking about creating a more ambitious system of unitary authorities throughout the county, ie along the lines of the existing Medway Council unitary authority being responsible for social services, education and economic development – at the moment elsewhere under the aegis of Kent County Council (KCC).

Under this scenario, KCC would cease to exist and all its existing functions would be delegated downwards to the new unitary authorities.

These services would arguably be brought closer to the people rather than being more remote.

However, under these circumstances there would also be a need for a more local tier of representation, which could be provided in the form of town councils in the urban areas balancing the existing parish councils in the rural areas.

Mr Wilson argues that pushing some services down to town and parish councils would increase costs, but one way of defraying the costs locally would be to divert the budget of Canterbury City Council’s civic team towards establishing lower-tier authorities in Whitstable, Herne Bay and Canterbury.

Anyway, the other four districts in east Kent already have established town councils, namely at Faversham (Swale), Ramsgate and Broadstairs (Thanet), Dover, Deal and Sandwich (Dover) and Folkestone and Hythe (Shepway).

Canterbury is the ‘odd one out’ in not having democratic accountability for the towns in its district. Peter Halfpenny Canterbury Road, Whitstable