Current Council situation in North Yorkshire 'confusing' says MP
The MP for Scarborough and Whitby says the current situation of having North Yorkshire County Council and district authorities is confusing.
There is less than two weeks remaining for people in North Yorkshire to have their say on two plans for devolution.
North Yorkshire County Council has submitted a bid for one large authority to cover the county, with more powers passed on to town and parish councils. City of York Council, itself already a unitary, would be left as it is under the proposals.
Six of the county’s seven district councils - Scarborough, Harrogate, Ryedale, Craven, Selby and Richmondshire - submitted a proposal dubbed the "East & West plan" that would see the county and York split in half to create two authorities of roughly the same population size under one Mayor.
Scarborough, Ryedale, Selby and York would be in one authority with Craven, Hambleton, Richmondshire and Harrogate in the other.
Both bids would see Scarborough and the other six district councils scrapped.
Robert Goodwill, MP for Scarborough and Whitby, said:
"I'm in favour of having an unitary authority as the current situation is very confusing for many people. Even though I work with both North Yorkshire County Council and Scarborough Borough Council all the time, even I sometimes get confused as to which council is acutally responsible for a particular bit of road or a car park.
"I think the move to unitary is a good idea as that would allow us to have a directly elected Mayor for York and North Yorkshire which I think will mean we're not longer left behind other areas. As we've seen from the pandemic, the Mayor has been the spokesperson for that region so in principle, I'm very much in favour of the change.
"When it comes to the choice between two authorities, east and west or two authorities, City of York and the rest of North Yorkshire, my view is that we should go with North Yorkshire,. It's already deploying around 80% of your council tax, it delivers a lot of important services; social care, education and highways.
"I believe that the minimum disruption and the best value for money would be through moving to a large unitary authority of the existing North Yorkshire county taking over the role of current borough, and at the same time giving more power to town councils like Whitby and I would hope allowing a Scarborough Town Council to be there to fill in the gap.
"Although you pay your council tax to Scarborough Borough Council, 80% of that goes to the County Council for them to spend on the services that they provide. Although people assume that the money's going to Scarborough Borough Council and they're spending it on their behalf, actually they're collecting on behalf of the County Council, Police and Crime Commissioner and the Fire Service.
"It is important that we have effective, elected councillors for the new unitary authority to make the case for the spending that we want to have in Scarborough, Whitby and up and down the coast. We may also have that additional voice of having a Scarborough Town Council that would be able to have assets, I hope, such as some car parks.
"We're still going to have a place you can go to in Scarborough to keep in touch with the council. I think the County Council have recognised the large geographic area makes some issues like planning difficult to do so you wouldn't have somebody living 12 miles from the Irish Sea making a decision on an extension in Staithes for example."
The consultation closes on Monday 19th April and it asks a number of questions about each proposal around value for money, proposed geography of the council and impact of the proposal on local services.
To take part in the consultation visit www.gov.uk/government/consultations/proposals-for-locally-led-reorganisation-of-local-government-in-cumbria-north-yorkshire-and-somerset.
The Local Government Secretary will consider all proposals following the consultation before making a decision about which option, if any, to implement. This would be subject to Parliamentary approval.
Subject to Parliamentary approval, it is expected that any new unitary council would be fully operational from April 2023 with transitional arrangements expected to be in place from 2022, including elections in May 2022 to the shadow or continuing councils.