Districts in Buckinghamshire threaten legal action over way unitary is being set up

Two district councils in Buckinghamshire have written to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government “as a preliminary step to legal proceedings” over the way in which a new unitary council for the county will be set up.

All four district councils decided at recent meetings of their Cabinet not to consent to the Regulations which were laid before Parliament earlier this month.

Chiltern District Council and Wycombe District Council said that in their letter to James Brokenshire they had raised specific concerns “about the lack of local consent, the recent changes to what was proposed and the lack of reasons given for making them as well as failure to ensure appropriate checks and balances”.  

In a joint statement, Cllr Isobel Darby, Leader of Chiltern District Council, and Cllr Katrina Wood, Leader of Wycombe District Council, said: "We are doing this with great reluctance but feel that the MHCLG has left us with no alternative.

“We have obviously thought long and hard about whether to take this step. But in this case we believe that it is in the best interests of our communities in Buckinghamshire to challenge the process being used. Our aim is not to hinder the creation of the new council but to ensure we get an excellent, new council, giving us the opportunity to start afresh and form a council that serves our residents and businesses well, and one we can be proud of.”

The Secretary of State announced in November last year that he backed plans establish a new single unitary district council for the area.

The minister then wrote to all five councils on 7 January setting out the key building blocks for the new council contained in the draft legislation. These include:

• the name of the new council will be ‘Buckinghamshire Council’ and it will have 147 councillors;
• elections for the new council will take place in May 2020;
• a temporary 'shadow' authority will be formed, with all current county and district councillors having a seat on this body; the shadow authority will set the 2020/21 council tax and budget. Leadership will be provided by a 17 seat shadow executive with the Leader of the County Council as its chairman;
• an implementation team, led by the county council chief executive and with a district chief executive as deputy, will be established to manage the transfer of services and staff to the new council.

A special meeting of the county’s Cabinet subsequently agreed its consent to the making of all the necessary legal regulations by the Government to create the single new unitary council.