Super-council plan demands close and careful scrutiny

This week’s revelation that consultants were paid £30,000 of taxpayers’ cash to look into merging five east Kent local authorities into a super-council isn’t so much about the money as the reasons they need to do it. Effectively, the districts of Canterbury, Shepway, Thanet, Dover and Ashford are admitting that they do not know what is best for them – that, even though they are supposed to be experts in local government, they need outside advice. But in a sense, perhaps we should not criticise too much. After all, this would be the biggest shake-up of local government in east Kent for a generation.

At present, Kent County Council looks after big departments such as highways, social services and education, while the boroughs or districts manage services such as cleaning, planning and parking.

A super-council might well help save public expenditure by centralising services, thereby cutting down on administrative costs. After all, Canterbury is already in a shared-services system for key areas such as housing.

But surely a larger council would become a more distant one, less close to local electorates.

At the moment, voters do not have to travel very far to attend meetings, but would someone from Thanet really want to travel across half of Kent for an evening at the council?

A more distant council will almost certainly become less accountable.

If we were to be cynical about the question of local authority reorganisation, then we would say that cutting costs would be the overriding factor in deciding if east Kent got a super-council.

And money is something the consultants know all about.