THURSDAY, October 23rd‘s West Dorset District Council meeting voted, by majority, for ‘in-principle’ partnership with Weymouth/ Portland and North Dorset.

This would reduce staffing to a single work-force covering the three authorities.

The result wouldn’t be comparable with e.g. Wiltshire’s successful, full unitary experience.

To get their ‘grant-pot’ the ‘partnership councils’ say they require a new joint chief-executive by March, 2015.

But this may mean acting before the government’s new plans for Local Government structures are announced pre-May, 2015.

Why not wait briefly to avoid a blatantly obvious possible muddle in the future?

What if they start, and the government advises in April to ‘go unitary’?

Some councillors called for WDDC to go unitary in one well-planned move, rather than trying to bolster an out-dated middle-tier of local government. WDDC’s gain from ‘partnership’ would average £264,000 pa (a tiny fraction of WDDC’s costs and with big risks, reorganisation upheaval, lessening of resource/service etc).

The real saving, if any, would be much lower, with service inevitably suffering… The executive’s recommendation contained three great omissions:

  • no cost/benefit financial numbers for WDDC for the crucial unitary option
  • no financial cost given for the massive diversion of everyone’s management time in re-organising all-over again Curiously, 28 of the 32 ruling-party councillors held back even from commenting in council on the recommendation.

But the Independents and Lib-Dems debated keenly, expressing serious concern at staff losses, and the extreme extra pressures staff would now be under.

No reply as yet from WDDC leader Robert Gould on the invitation to attend a public meeting to express interactively his executive’s thinking on ‘partnership’ versus ‘unitary’. Silence seems an unusual form of democracy.

John Grantham Burton Bradstock