Despite no mention in its manifesto of local government reorganisation (LGR), the Government decided not only that it would abolish tiers of local government to create huge, anonymous unitary councils – councils so far from any notion of local communities that most will have points of the compass in their titles to give a rough idea where the hell they are – it also craftily handed responsibility to councils to sign their own death warrants by producing reorganisation plans.
All so English local government, already the biggest in Europe could become even bigger. In doing this it misses the point, that if English councils are already the biggest, why aren't they the best? And it fails totally to pay any attention to how smaller and tiered local government systems across the globe manage so well, while similarly dismissing the mountain of evidence that shows bigger does not guarantee better.
