Row over bid to ask Gloucester residents about future city council voted down
A row has broken out over whether Gloucester residents should be consulted on the future governance of the county town and who elects its mayors and sheriffs as the city council faces abolition.
Local government in the county is being reorganised and district authorities such as Gloucester City Council will be merged with Gloucestershire County Council, under the current plans.
This would then lead to the creation of one or more unitary authorities providing the combined services those councils currently provide today, such as bin collections, planning, social care and highways maintenance.
However, Gloucester could be left without its own council as all of the city apart from Quedgeley is not represented by a parish council.
Liberal Democrat city council leader Jeremy Hilton’s (Kingsholm and Wotton) proposed at the meeting on May 18 that the first round of consultation begin this month and run until June 16 was rejected.
His report said a community governance review is recommended so the council can explore all available options for the preservation of the civic offices of Mayor and Sheriff, should the outcome of local government reorganisation necessitate such action.
Transfer to a successor parish council is one of two options available, the other is via creation of charter trustees.
The idea was that then draft recommendations would be delegated to another committee before the final recommendations would then be considered by all councillors.
Cllr Hilton said if a single county unitary option was selected for Gloucestershire, Gloucester would “actually have no council whatsoever that looks after its own patch without a parish council”.
“Hereford has, Salisbury has, lots of other cities or large towns inside unitary councils have a parish council,” he said.
The council was facing a tight deadline to get the work done, he added.
Deputy leader Declan Wilson (LD, Hucclecote) asked councillors to back the recommendation and said was not a decision to create a parish council or “impose any particular model on Gloucester”.
He said it was a decision to start a community review and ask residents for their views.
However, opposition councillors were concerned about how much extra residents may have to pay in tax and the lack of details around cost.
Labour deputy leader Karen James (Kingsway) said she was worried about why it was being rushed through so quickly.
“I do feel that this is possibly a fall back position for if the Greater Gloucester option does not come out of the local government review,” she said.
“I’m really concerned that we are not asking the right questions here. How can you expect a meaningful answer to a consultation that leaves out important details like what services this parish council will provide.
“Will it just be parks and grass cutting?
“Will it be refuse collection, will it indeed have any assets that could have possibly transferred over to the new unitary authority.
“I’m also concerned about how much it will cost the people of Gloucester. I thought the whole point of local government reorganisation was cutting out layers of local authority, not introducing new ones.”
Conservative Councillor Andrew Gravells (Abbeydale) said it was “regrettable they are only being told half the story”.
“We don’t know what shape it’s going to be. We don’t know what the parish council’s responsibilities are going to be.
“And most importantly of all we don’t know how much money we are going to be asking the residents of Gloucester to pay extra on top of their council tax.
But Cllr Rebecca Trimnell (LD, Westgate) said local government reorganisation was “thrown on them”.
And at this stage it is unknown what services would be expected of such a parish council, she said.
“There is no way that we can put a full case together that can be taken out,” she said.
“But this is the first step of a process in giving us, this council, control over what happens to our civics.”
Cllr Hilton said all the council would be doing at this stage is a consultation.
“We are not proposing anything at this point in time,” he said.
“I’m completely open minded. I really don’t care. If you don’t vote for this I just think we’ve shot ourselves in the foot and just playing political points.”
He said they are proposing consulting the public on the three options the Government is looking at.
“What do you think ought to be the future in Gloucester itself, for the civics, whether it should have a town council, the one council including Quedgeley or whether it should be two separate ones or half a dozen of them.
“It’s a consultation and you don’t want a consultation.”
The proposal was defeated by 17 votes to 18.