Understanding local government re-organization in Surrey by Neil Lock

Here is my summary, based on documents publicly available on the Internet, of where we are today with regard to local government re-organization in Surrey.

• What Labour mean by “devolution” is not at all what most voters would expect it to mean. Far from bringing government closer to the people, they are seeking to concentrate local government power throughout England in the hands of a small number of mayors. These mayors’ powers will be both strong and wide-ranging.
• Tory-controlled Surrey County Council (SCC) has provided a very poor level of service in recent years, and has acted against the interests of the people of Surrey, including by making the council a member of the “nett zero” zealot organization UK 100.
• Waverley Borough Council (WBC), under a coalition led by the Lib Dems, has also shown green zealotry by officially supporting the extremist organization Zero Hour, that seeks to abandon the use of fossil fuels as quickly as possible.
• Surrey councils have combined debts of around £4,500 for each man, woman and child in the county. These are concentrated in Woking, Spelthorne and Runnymede, but the county council itself also has significant debt, and Guildford and Surrey Heath’s debts are rapidly increasing.
• Labour central government’s preferred plan for Surrey is division into two or more unitary authorities, followed within a year by establishment of a mayoral county authority covering the area previously governed by Surrey County Council.
• There are, as yet, no agreed or even published plans on how to address the debt situation. The design for re-organization is being driven forward without a clear financial baseline.
• The timescales for the re-organizations look all but impracticable.
• I was unable to find any clear and detailed statement of how the mayoral county authority is planned to work in practice. In particular, it is not clear how, or how well, unitary authority members would be able to represent the people who elected them.
• When the Tories in control of Surrey County Council received notice of the Labour government’s desire for re-organization, they acted with almost comical haste to get the May 1^st elections postponed until 2026. The postponement was made over the objections of all 11 of the Surrey borough and district councils.
• Surrey residents have not been formally consulted about any of the proposed changes. In fact, Surrey has been excluded from the counties in which consultations are taking place over the future introduction of a mayoral system. This despite a commitment to hold such consultations, and the precedent of 2012, where (pre-emptive actions by certain councils notwithstanding) local referendums were held on whether mayors should be introduced.
• Interim and final plans were submitted, as follows:
  1. Surrey County Council and two of the 11 borough or district councils (Elmbridge and Mole Valley) preferred a two-unitary set-up. They presented four options, of which they chose one that leaves both Waverley and Guildford residents bracketed with all three of the financially troubled councils.
  2. The remaining nine councils preferred a three-unitary system, which brackets Waverley and Guildford with Woking, but not with Spelthorne or Runnymede.
  3. A survey apparently took place of around 3,000 people across Surrey, which claimed overwhelming support for the three-unitary proposal. However, the results of this survey are not publicly available.
• An option of going directly to a Surrey-wide unitary council has been discussed, but central government insists that no further devolution would be possible in this case without widening the territory of the mayoral authority beyond Surrey.
• The SCC councillors who should have faced re-election on May 1^st are still in place, without any mandate from the people. It is not clear how long they will be allowed to continue in post, or what will be the powers of the shadow councillors elected in May 2026.

(By Neil Lock, Reform UK Godalming and Ash Interim Campaigns. Originally written 01 June 2025)