I was dismayed by some of the language used by Cllr Richard Rout in his piece on Local Government Reorganisation last week.
He appears to have gone full-on “Project Fear” in his attempt to persuade Suffolk residents to back his plan for a single mega-council for Suffolk, peppering his piece with some decidedly dodgy claims.

The first one was that a single unitary county council would save £103m over five years whereas to have three unitary councils would lose £50m. You will see these figures bandied about quite a lot by Suffolk County Council so it’s important to recognise where they’ve come from. They are from a report commissioned by the County Council Network, a lobbying group for county councils, so hardly unbiased.

The CCN’s intent in commissioning the report was to show that unitary authorities based on county councils were the best way forward and, surprise, surprise, that is exactly the conclusion it came to. A slightly more impartial report by KPMG for all the district councils in Suffolk says that a system of three unitary councils would actually save around £16m.

An even dodgier figure produced by Cllr Rout is that Ipswich residents pay £500 more for the same services than other residents in Suffolk. The average council tax for a house in Ipswich is only £326 so you can see how wildly off the mark this is.

Other district councils do charge less than Ipswich, but they all have town and parish councils that can add up to £150 on to council tax bills. Ipswich doesn’t have any parish councils so doesn’t have this extra charge.

Taking parish and town councils into account the difference in council tax bills between Ipswich and other Suffolk councils is only around £1 a week.
Rather more pertinent – and something Conservative county councillors don’t like to talk about – is that they charge Suffolk residents an average of £1,283 – nearly four times Ipswich Borough Council’s rate!

I was more concerned about Cllr Rout attacking Ipswich Borough Council for having higher levels of debt and lower reserves than other Suffolk councils as this betrays a (deliberate?) lack of understanding about the most fundamental service that district councils provide: housing.

Most councils in Suffolk have higher reserves than Ipswich because they sold off their council houses in the 1990s. Ipswich Borough Council held on to its council houses because that’s what our tenants wanted.
Councils with council housing used to be part of a national system. Some received money from the Government. Others had to pay the Government money. Ipswich was paying £7.8m a year.

In 2012 councils who still had council housing were able to buy their way out of this system. It cost Ipswich nearly £100m which sounds a lot but, with 8,175 council houses, it is equivalent to a mortgage of only slightly over £12,000 per house.
Although the money had to be borrowed, the cost of servicing this borrowing is still £1.3m a year less than we were paying the government previously.

This has enabled Ipswich Borough Council to build 515 new council houses – significantly more than any other council in Suffolk. Meanwhile the average rent for the council houses that were sold off in a neighbouring authority is £3 a week higher than in Ipswich.
More houses, for cheaper rents, at a lower cost to the council: I’m not sure that’s quite the failure Cllr Rout thinks it is.

For county councillors to resort to half-truths, distortion and spin to rubbish alternative reorganisation plans shows just one thing: they are not at all confident in the strength of their own proposal for a single mega council for Suffolk.
I’m not surprised. I’ve not met anyone outside the Conservative administration at the County Council who supports it – and it’s not even backed by all the Conservative councillors.

My own preference is for three councils for Suffolk based on East, West and the wider Ipswich area. Large enough to be sustainable but small enough to be local. That seems to be much more in tune with what our residents want.

By all means let’s have the debate, but please Cllr Rout, let’s keep it honest, truthful, and respectful in future.