Where from you may ask? The answer probably lies in the fire sale of assets by Northumberland County Council and the six borough councils and a drain on reserves. The shortfall? Cutbacks, non delivery of services and damage limitation.

In short, the Labour Government, being politically motivated, has imposed a single new authority not for economic expediency, but political gain. It is alleged that the decision was made some years ago and 'the process' in considering the choice between a single authority and the two unitary authority bid has been a sham.

The LGR proposal is fundamentally based around consolidating the six district councils and the County Council into a single new authority. In so doing, we are told that the three layers of County, Borough and Town/Parish will now consist of County, Characteristic (Regional) and Belonging (Local) communities. In short, we are replacing three layers with another three. Following so far?

The single authority bid was built from the top down whereas the two unitary bid was built from the bottom up, exactly in the same manner as in commerce (the Real World).

The County Council was so devoid of ideas that it had to engage outside consultants to draw up the bid and one suspects that with the continuing assistance from Westminster redrafted several times in order for Hazel Blears to rubber-stamp.

Anyone with a modicum of business experience can see that consolidation of back office services and personnel would make economic sense providing it was targeted to the community, but we live in both a vast rural and urban County and this has to be a major consideration to provide focused and expected standards of delivery.

This can be best explained when it comes to the Belonging Communities (Local) when even the officers empowered to roll this out know what they have been asked to do, but completely fail in knowing how to deliver it. They have the plan, they have the theory, but do not know how to achieve their plan in practice. If they don't know, how do we?

It will take years for those excellent and varied organisations to merge into one Belonging Community in order to make a difference, by which time we'll have probably reverted back to our current LGR structure.

A second example of the unnecessary cost implications that will be incurred is the Police. They have recently reorganised within Northumberland and it will cost millions more to reorganise around the current LGR proposal. A useful expense for what outcome? Personally, I'd put more officers on the streets of Morpeth on a Friday and Saturday night, but then that would make economic sense.

The Labour dominated County Council, mainly from the South East of our County, and the record of under-achievement of Northumberland County Council is a matter of record, although its recent achievements were rewarded by the issue of thousands of mugs. No doubt entirely deserved and an excellent use of funds.

The new Council will be wholly dependent on the co-operation, ability and the professionalism of the 67 councillors elected, and there lies the rub.

£17m saving after year four of the new authority — pure fiction.

CHARLES SELLERS
Hepscott