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May -local local elections will be delayed in nine areas of southern England under the plans of radical reorganization of the Council and the introduction of further transfer.
East Sussex, West Sussex, Essex, Thurrock, Hampshire, Wight, Norfolk, Suffolk and Surrey will delay their polls while making detailed plans for new authorities.
Deputy Government Angela Rayner He said that the move was part of the “Devolution Revolution” that would save money by creating a larger, more effective council to which further power could be submitted from Westminster.
She has also confirmed six new council groups on the “Priority” list for devolution contracts: Cumbria, Cheshire and Warrington, Norfolk and Suffolk, Greater Essex, Sussex and Brighton, and Hampshire and Solent.
The news comes only a few weeks after ministers said they were planning the largest earthquake of local government in half a century.
All areas currently in accordance with the two -layer construction of the Council, in which the district councils provide neighboring services such as collecting buckets and county councils provide social welfare, are radically transmitted.
Ministers intend to abolish all 164 district councils and instead create new one -layer government of about 500,000 people.
In December, the County Council requested that they make initial proposals on geographies of such a move, including all requirements for delaying elections while the new authorities were set.
Rayner said she had rejected half of these requests, but added that she was “not in the job of maintaining a bodies choice that would not exist and where we do not know what to replace them”.
“This would be an expensive and irresponsible loss of taxpayers’ money,” she said.
Responding to the delay of the survey, the UK Reform, the right -wing populist party, accused the Labor and the conservative of “clashes” to officially cancel over 5.5 million votes in May. “
Reform, which took over the lead in the national poll For the first time this week, it fastened its hopes in the May election, as it seemed to build support on the field.
Proposals for reorganization were encouraged by the immediate return after being published in the Devolution of the December.
The network of district councils, the sector body, claimed that the ministers created a remote “mega council” far greater than their equivalent in continental Europe.
There were also discomfort within the Labor order regarding the move.
“I’m not sure they thought it,” said a senior party official, warning that the earthquake could reduce the incentives for the Labor’s activist base, reducing the opportunity to perform the duty of the councilor.
“People are angry about it – and it is unlikely that a campaign or at least a campaign as difficult, for the party after being abolished their roles,” the clerk said.
Kevin Hollinrake, a local government secretary in the shadow, said the reorganization procedure “massively rushed” and warned that he was not a “attempt” to seek the consensus on the ground.
“Locals are not advised,” he said. “Council leaders have a” gun to the head “from the Government of Labor.”
