Norfolk councils to take legal action over single unitary plan

Five local authorities in Norfolk are threatening to take the Boundary Committee to court over its proposals to introduce a single unitary authority for the county.

The move comes after the Committee recommended the reorganisation in advice handed to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government on 7 December 2009.

The five councils involved in the Keep Norfolk Local campaign are King’s Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council, Breckland Council, Broadland District Council, North Norfolk District Council and South Norfolk Council.

The leader of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk, Cllr Nick Daubney, launched a blistering attack on the Committee. He added: “The arrogance of the Boundary Committee astounds us. It has blatantly ignored the views and opinions of the overwhelming majority of Norfolk people.”

Daubney pointed to the Committee’s consultation, which concluded that 85% of people were not in favour of a single county unitary, and the five councils’ own IPSOS Mori poll where only 10% expressed a preference for that arrangement.

He said: “The cost of implementing such a restructure would run into tens of millions of pounds – money that will have to be taken from existing budgets and topped up with borrowing. The savings predicted are only theoretical.

“The Committee is basing its recommendation on pre-recession figures that are already three years out of date. This is an unacceptably high risk to take with council tax payers’ money at a time when they can least afford it.”

The Boundary Committee examined two options when compiling its report, looking at a two unitary pattern comprising Greater Norwich and Rural Norfolk as well as the single unitary.

Although recognising that the two unitary pattern “had some merit”, it concluded that such an arrangement was unlikely to have the capacity to deliver all the outcomes specified by the Secretary of State’s criteria. The Committee also recommended that the original proposal for unitary status from Norwich City Council should not be implemented.

It its report, the Committee said it was conscious of the Secretary of State’s guidance that support for change need not be from the majority of respondents and that a measure of support from key partners, stakeholders and service users/citizens was sufficient – on that basis the single unitary authority passed the test.

Cllr Simon Wood, leader of Breckland, said the five councils did not want to see businesses and people in Norfolk “paying millions of pounds for a restructuring of local government that they do not support and that will not serve their needs”.