Good News for Woking residents

It is good news for Woking residents that the real danger of a Surrey Unitary Authority - effectively the County Council taking over all the Surrey Boroughs and Districts - has been seen off. All the Surrey Boroughs and Districts have worked well and firmly together to see off this threat.

A Surrey Unitary Authority - with 1,300,000 residents - would simply have been too large and remote.

In addition, under its present Conservative Executive, Surrey County Council has a "reverse Midas" effect. Everything it touches turns to dross.

Under its recent "Blight and Disaster Review", that Tory Executive:

fired most of the front-line highways staff with heavy redundancy costs, then had to recruit less experienced replacements because the remaining staff could not cope with the resultant increase in workload;

entered into a set of highways contracts with private sector contractors under which it has been ripped off by millions of pounds;

reduced its social workers in Woking from the legal minimum of 58 to a mere 38, and thereby over-burdened other agencies, such as the Health

Service, the Citizens Advice Bureau and the Borough Council - all of which

are publicly-funded, so there is no net saving of public funds;

because of the dreadful way it treated its staff, has lost almost all its Emergency Planning Team;

and has reduced its Trading Standards staff, so that those remaining cannot properly police the sale of alcohol to under-age children.

It is a good outcome for local residents that a Surrey Unitary Authority will not now take over our local services and ruin them too!

But why, particularly at a time of financial stringency, did Surrey's Tory Executive spend thousands of pounds on outside consultants, and also have 14 senior staff working full-time, on putting together an unwanted take-over bid for all the Surrey Boroughs and Districts? The cost to Council Taxpayers must be in the order of £1,000,000 - all of it a total waste of money.

Philip Goldenberg