“Hands off Eastleigh”

Councils across England have been told to put forward plans to abolish existing Borough and County Councils and replace them with smaller Unitary Councils, with no public consultation.

For us in Eastleigh that means the blessing of the end of the remote and unresponsive Hampshire County Council, but the threat of the loss of all the local area working in the community we have pioneered in Eastleigh over 30 years.

What to do? We don’t want this, and we certainly don’t want government diktats that say councils must have populations of half a million: Eastleigh’s population is around 135,000. But we do have to respond to the government.

We’ve said we don’t want a new council that simply bolts Eastleigh onto Southampton. The city is broke, as is the share of Hampshire’s revenue spend, we would inherit. Any new council would need to cover the wider city-region and reinforce local working. We are already transferring more land and services to our Parish and Town Councils. Our decision to set up local councils for Chandler’s Ford, Eastleigh and Bishopstoke over the last 20 years has been proven right: we need to preserve local democracy.

This whole project from Labour could collapse under its own complexity. Hopefully it will. Hands off Eastleigh!