Local Voices matter - a better way to reorganise government
Local Voices matter - a better way to reorganise government
Leader of the Council Cllr Martin Tod, says:
"Hampshire wants to create the biggest rural councils our country has ever seen. The only councils with more people would be Leeds City Council and Birmingham City Council.
Their plan puts the Winchester District in with Basingstoke & Deane, Hart, Rushmoor and East Hampshire - to create a council with more than 655,000 people. It would stretch from the edge of Newbury to the edge of Portsmouth - and from Aldershot to Otterbourne - absolutely enormous and in no sense a 'local council'.
Leader of Winchester City Council, Cllr Martin Tod
Merging county and district councils should be a chance to improve services – for example, by better coordination between housing and social care or planning and highways – it won’t do this if the new councils are too big, too remote and fail to deliver locally.
We will be proposing a plan with better, more joined up services and a scale of council that can respond to local needs. That’s why Winchester is working with most councils in Hampshire and the Solent in backing four mainland authorities. As we can see from Hampshire's plans, anything fewer and the councils will be too big.
The county council’s proposed councils are inevitably going to be so enormous, so remote and so bureaucratic that they can’t deliver locally. They are also too unwieldy to deliver the kind of change and transformation needed to sort out the catastrophic mess of county finances. If reorganisation doesn’t deliver better services and results for local people, there’s no point in doing it."
We have a better way:
Joint statement by Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council, Eastleigh Borough Council, Fareham Borough Council, Hart District Council, Havant Borough Council, Isle of Wight Council, New Forest District Council, Portsmouth City Council, Rushmoor Borough Council, Southampton City Council, Test Valley Borough Council and Winchester City Council.
Hampshire County Council has published its case for a future of only three, large-scale, councils across the county.
Their proposal risks creating remote, oversized councils, cut off from the places and people they serve. Our communities deserve better.
Here’s what the 12 councils working together across Hampshire, Southampton, Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight believe:
Local people should shape local decisions
Making councils bigger makes it harder for residents to influence decisions that affect their daily lives, like school places, adult social care, housing and transport.
Biggest doesn’t mean best
Services like social care and special educational needs are already under pressure. Proposing three large councils won’t fix that. The evidence shows that larger public authorities don’t guarantee better services, and they often feel more distant and harder to access for local people.
There’s a better way
The councils working together across Hampshire and the Solent are putting forward proposals for five unitary authorities (four on the mainland and one; the Isle of Wight) that are:
large enough to succeed, with the capacity to deliver joined-up services and value for money
small enough to care, rooted in real places and responsive to the communities they serve
Smaller councils already prove this can work. They deliver high-performing services like waste collection, housing, and local regeneration. They respond quickly to local needs, support diverse communities, and work closely with local businesses, schools and voluntary groups. This isn’t theory, it’s how we work every day.
We already work together at scale when it makes sense; like through Project Integra, our long-standing waste partnership across Hampshire. We collaborate to save money and improve services, without losing the local accountability and flexibility our communities value.
Local identity should count
Real communities are shaped around sense of place and how people actually live, where they travel, learn, work and access services. This is why we are asking people to tell us about these things and share their views on our three options.
Crucially, Hampshire County Council’s own research shows people feel most connected to their immediate neighbourhoods, not large remote councils, and that many fear LGR will reduce their sense of local identity, weaken local representation, and make services harder to access. For the services people rely on every day, like roads and travel, local understanding matters. A single, county-wide approach can’t reflect the needs of such a diverse area. Our proposed model allows services to be designed and delivered around real communities, not a one-size-fits-all system.
Local democracy needs more than ‘token localism’
HCC’s plan for district area panels and locality teams within super-sized councils isn’t enough risks creating powerless talking shops. Communities need genuine decision-making power at neighbourhood level, with frontline councillors supported to lead and shape local priorities.
We are committed to creating councils that are simpler, stronger and more local, not just bigger. And we will continue working together to build a future that reflects the people and places of Hampshire and the Solent.
