Respected Lib Dem questions County Hall neglect of City

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Sat 20th Jan 2007

Dr. Edward Gibson, a respected member of Norwich South Liberal Democrats, has written to Norfolk County Council questioning their attitude to the proposed unitary authority for Norwich.

Responding to a letter that he received recently from the County Council, and also to the case against change that was made in the December issue of "Norfolk Matters", Dr Gibson wrote:

I was of course duly impressed by the details given of how interwoven are the services provided for the city and the county and of the estimated cost of separating these. However, I have no expertise in this field and feel that I must leave the assessment of your case to those Norwich councillors and officials who are experienced in this field, and here I must comment that I am impressed by the fact that all three major parties seem to of the same opinion in their support for the change to a unitary authority.

My own support for change stems mainly from my feeling that the county council has tended to ignore and override the opinions and the needs of the city.

Recent examples of this include the controversy on whether Westlegate should be partly pedestrianised and, much more importantly, the continuing controversies over incineration and over the possible sale of the Blackdale School playing fields. These seem to show a tendency to ignore the opinions of local people and, more importantly, those of their elected city councillors.

As I have commented before, I cannot help wondering whether some of the county councillors who voted on these issues lived 20, 30 or even 40 miles away from the areas in question.

Certainly, these examples seem to contravene the principle that all decisions should, in the first instance, be made at the lowest possible level.

I say "in the first instance" because I realize that there is a nimbyish not-in-my-backyard tendency in all of us and that it may be necessary for decisions to be agreed, modified or even overturned by a higher authority, - perhaps regional, national or even, very occasionally, European. However, this does not invalidate the principal of making decisions at the lowest possible level in the first instance.

Finally, may I add that if the bid for unitary status fails on this occasion it is most important that the county council learns to act in a far less overriding manner where city matters are concerned.