The Conservative Group on the District Council have put forward the following motion for Tuesday’s Full Council:
In the light of the recent pronouncements made by the Leader of Southend Borough Council concerning the potential merger of Southend, this Authority and Castle Point Borough Council, this Council would like to place on record its strong opposition to any such proposal. That said, this Council remains committed to examining potential options for Shared Services with its neighbouring authorities, and other authorities for that matter, where it makes sense to do so and where it is of benefit to Rochford District residents and businesses. Our new ICT services contract with Capita involving Braintree District Council, Colchester Borough Council, and Castle Point Borough Council, as well as this authority, is an example of such working arrangements, which have brought significant financial and other benefits to all four Authorities.?
I agree with them on this.
I guess there will some nervousness about being joined to a bigger authority. I think some reorganisation is overdue and regret that in Government we failed to succeed with Regional authorities (the one referendum was defeated owing, in my view, to our reluctance to give it any power).
The Tories in Rochford evidently think Essex suits them better than Southend-on-Sea.
I have written a piece on this here – http://warelane.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/south-east-essex-super-unitary/
The motion was passed tonight unanimously, with all 4 party leaders speaking in support.
So at last, a subject that even Southend BC Cllrs Holdcroft and Ware-Lane appear content to share agreement upon?!
And yet?!
…………….Debt millions….Population…..Debt per capita……… Interest if 5% p.a.
Southend________287.1____________174,300______________1,647____________ 82.36
Castle Point_______43.7_____________89,200_______________490 ____________24.50
Rochford___________0.0____________83,300_________________0_______________0.0
Merged__________330.8____________346,800_______________954____________47.69
I see lots of advantages for Southend BC and its residents, BUT there is one not so small snag though.
The idea carefully avoids the little matter of SBC’s £287million debt and Castle Point’s £43.7 million debt relative to Rochford District’s freedom from debt. The table above may give a more realistic flavour of the relative ‘financial viability’ that Cllr Holdcroft is apparently so concerned about. My 5% interest rate assumption should reflect a more sustainable long term rate than is currently available, but simply divide my annual interest figures by 5 to obtain the change for each 1% variance that you may prefer. It changes the argument hardly an iota.
So if the three authorities were merged, I could certainly see huge advantages for residents of Southend, as with one mighty bound their debt decreases by 42% along with its annual servicing costs.
However, what exactly would be the advantages for residents of Castle Point and most especially for residents of Rochford District?
Despite the SBC population being slightly higher than my previous estimation (I presume the population figures Cllr Ware-Lane supplied are all from the latest census, which were not previously found available for SBC on its website), it little changed my figures for the cost of a merged authority to every man, woman and child residing in RDC being around the £1000 mark, even if ECC services currently supplied to RDC and CP involved some debt finance cost.
RDC may be the Green Lung around SBC but neither the residents of Rochford District nor its Members representing them are Cabbage Green. Forget the merger idea Southend; RDC Members are UNANIMOUSLY against it, and so should RDC residents be.
Please do email or write to your respective MP to let them know what YOU feel about the adverse impact that it would have upon you financially,environmentally and culturally.
Thank you Colin for the figures.