Later, he sent an email with details from the draft Structural Changes Order, or SCO. Surrey county elections that were due to take place earlier this year were postponed because of a possible reorganisation. The SCO includes provision to cancel next year’s borough and county elections and to run unitary elections, for Surrey West and Surrey East, in May 2026 instead.
Currently, there is a two-tier system of local government in Surrey. It took me a while to get used to this when I moved from Croydon just over the border to Woodmansterne. The lower tier, like Reigate and Banstead Borough Council, looks after bins, planning, housing, licensing and green spaces, and has 45 councillors. The upper tier, Surrey County Council, is responsible for education, social care, health, highways and transport, and has 10 councillors elected from within the Reigate and Banstead area.
In total, that’s 55 councillors representing the area I live in. I can’t remember anyone ever complaining that there are too many councillors. In fact, residents in the ward I represent — Hooley, Merstham and Netherne — have long wanted an additional county councillor, rather than a single councillor covering such a vast area.
Community and campaign groups enjoy and benefit from close geographical contact with their local councillors.
But then, on Tuesday, came the announcement from government, and Secretary of State Steve Reed, that Surrey is to be divided into two unitary areas. There will now be just 20 councillors representing an area of 159,000 residents.
This is a devastating attack on our representative democracy.
In 1965, there were 75,000 councillors nationwide. After this latest local government reorganisation, only 14,000 will remain.
The draft Structural Changes Order issued on Tuesday confirmed the intention to use county division boundaries for the May 2026 elections, with two councillors to be elected per ward. Unitary councillors will be appointed for an initial term of five years (so, until 2031) and thereafter for four years.
The term of all existing councillors will end on April 1, 2027. The two new unitaries, West Surrey and East Surrey councils, will operate in “shadow authority” form from May 2026 until the end of March 2027.
There was a public consultation over this. During that consultation period, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government sought views on creating two or three unitary councils to replace Surrey County Council. In my conversations with local residents’ associations and community groups, nobody — absolutely nobody — supported the idea of two unitary authorities.
The consultation in Surrey was skewed. Surrey County Council supported two unitary councils, as did the borough councils of Elmbridge and Mole Valley.
Breaking the law: Surrey County Council used tax-payers’ money to lobby for the two-council split. Note how few of the other existing councils in the county supported this plan
The remaining nine borough councils — Epsom and Ewell, Guildford, Reigate and Banstead, Runnymede, Spelthorne, Surrey Heath, Waverley, Woking, and Tandridge — did not.
Surrey County Council spent £64,000 of Council Tax-payers’ money to promote its preferred outcome of two unitary councils.
The leaflet circulated to every household was blatantly biased.
I complained about this to the Monitoring Officer of Surrey County Council.
Paragraph 16 of The Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity states: “Local authorities should not use public funds to mount publicity campaigns whose primary purpose is to persuade the public to hold a particular view on a question of policy.”
Paragraph 19 states: “Where local authority publicity addresses matters of political controversy, it should seek to present the different positions in relation to the issue in question in a fair manner.”
Undoubtedly, the move to abolish the existing two-tier system of local governance is being driven by cost-saving considerations. Some estimates suggest savings of around £2billion could be made over five years if all remaining two-tier areas become single unitary councils.
Yet earlier this year, the House of Commons Library published a report stating: “It is not clear from available evidence whether unitary councils save money compared with a two-tier system. International experience suggests that, when councils are merged, sometimes the merged council saves money and sometimes it does not.”
Steve Reed is also claiming that these changes in Surrey will some how “speed up housebuilding”. Surely, reform of the planning system could achieve that without dismantling local democracy?
I wonder under what circumstances Steve Reed would have opted for three unitary councils in Surrey? Probably none.
- In May 2023, Shasha Khan was elected as a councillor for Hooley, Merstham and Netherne ward on Reigate and Banstead Borough Council for the Green Party
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