On September 26, the Government will decide which Unitary Authority model will be adopted for Norfolk.
Yes, you read that right, not the county council, not the district councils, and not the electorate of Norfolk.
The government will decide.
The Conservative-led county council have had their say; they prefer a single Unitary Authority model which they say will deliver the greatest cost savings moving forward.
Most of the district councils and the city council prefer a three Unitary Authority model because they say it will deliver services more locally.
What does the most popular political party in Norfolk, Reform UK, have to say?
Nobody knows because we were denied the opportunity to become the biggest party in the county council when local elections were cancelled in May.
The electorate across the county have been invited to contribute to a consultation process, but anyone believing that this was anything other than paying lip service to the public would be very much mistaken.
After all, could we imagine for a minute that if most respondents had said that they would rather leave local government as it is, then the whole project would be scrapped?
Of course not.
The Reform UK position is that we do believe that local government is long overdue for a major overhaul.
After all, which bit of local government works?
Apart from some district councils, such as Breckland, that have demonstrated financial prudence, all local government runs a deficit in Norfolk, has huge debts, increases council tax every year, often at a higher rate than inflation, and presides over lower levels of services each year.
At Reform UK we call this utter failure.
Whether Unitary Authorities are the solution is hard to say as there is little evidence of them delivering better services and better value for local taxpayers in other parts of the country where they have already been introduced.
In the end, we will have Unitary Authorities whether we want them or not and the three Unitary model will be decided as the best model by central government because it is the only model that allows Labour any chance of controlling any part of Norfolk.
The population criteria of 500,000 per Unitary Authority will simply go out of the window in favour of political expediency, but the real gerrymandering will come in when the drawing of the boundary around a Greater Norwich Unitary Authority is published.
The drawing of the line will include wards that Labour think they can win and eliminate the growing number of wards that Labour know they will lose.
I sincerely hope I am wrong, and we end up with one Unitary Authority for Norfolk.
Whatever the outcome in September, Reform UK will fight every seat across the county and wrestle control of Norfolk from the two legacy parties that have failed it for decades.
We will spend taxpayers’ money as if it were our own, a novel concept I know, and end all wasteful and unnecessary spending in local government.
Nick Taylor is chairman of the Norwich branch of Reform UK
