District Councils Respond to Minister’s Comments on the Devolution White Paper

July 3 2020

Responding to comments made by the Minister Simon Clarke on local government reorganisation at the LGA virtual annual conference, Cllr John Fuller OBE, Chairman of the District Councils’ Network, said:

“The coronavirus crisis has demonstrated that local works best, and that bigger is not always better. The pace of innovation in solving final mile problems has shown that local governance is much more than the analysis of numbers and spreadsheets.

“We must look to the future at delivering services in ways that make most sense to people and businesses and the way in which they live their lives. That does not mean being handcuffed to remote boundaries laid down a millennium ago or putting too much on thousands of separate smaller parishes.

“If there are to be changes in local governance it must be locally-led and recognise that district councils are the building blocks of local economies and the champions of towns, cities and communities.

“In the meantime, districts are focused on supporting over 20 million residents and businesses across 60 per cent of England at this most critical time in our nation’s history because we know our local economies like no one else, working across places that business and residents recognise and relate to.”