Bad time to shake-up services says leader

THE LEADER of a North Yorkshire district council says now is an “awful time” to hold a consultation on how local services should be organised in the county.

Craven District Council has written to the Government arguing that this was the wrong time for local government reorganisation.

The consultation, which closes today, asks residents and local organisations to have their say on what should replace the current two-tier system of local councils.

North Yorkshire County Council has proposed creating one unitary council for the county, with York remaining separate, while district leaders have submitted a bid for two authorities split on an east-west basis.

At a meeting last week, members of Craven council agreed to respond to the consultation themselves on behalf of residents.

Leader Richard Foster said: “The way the consultation has been carried out, a lot of our residents haven’t and won’t have responded.

“It’s not a referendum, it’s an online consultation; it doesn’t make it easy for everybody. We’re the elected representatives and we ought to respond.”

He added: “We do think this is an awful time to be doing local government reorganisation.

“We are supposed to be building back. And so I believe a letter ought to go with that, and also just saying that the consultation of the local residents has been very, very poor.”

Coun Foster added: “County submitted the first bid for this. We asked them not to but they did it. They started the process.

“We were told if any authority sent a bid in it would be on the table and it would be there. We felt the county one needed a challenger. North Yorkshire is massive. Putting Bentham and Ingleton with Scarborough and Whitby is a real problem. We know that, we know that from Highways and everything else.”