The news that the district council is likely to be supplanted by an expanded county council with a new mayor, raises unease about the drift to greater centralisation of power in the UK.
It reminds me of the effect of the earlier elimination of the truly local councils we used to have.
When the population of Spalding was a mere 17,000, our local government was the Spalding Urban District Council (SUDC).
The surrounding rural area had its own council (SRDC).
In retrospect, it is astonishing what those councils managed.
Take the urban council:
l It built and managed several council-housing estates, the largest being the post-war St Paul’s Estate.
l It owned and ran the local gas works, and delivered the local gas service.
l It took electricity from the grid and delivered the local electricity service.
l It developed the water extraction plant at Bourne and delivered water and sewerage services in Spalding. As part of that service, after WW2 it built and managed the Chatterton Water Tower.
l It built and ran a care home for the elderly.
l In about 1938, it built the splendid Cattle Market, which was widely considered the finest in the UK.
l It built the current swimming pool.
l It built the South Holland Centre.
l It provided live-in managers for both cemetery and Ayscoughfee.
l It employed professionally qualified engineers to run its technical services.
l The chief officer of the council had no grand title: he was simply known as the ‘chief clerk’.
l And, perhaps most telling of all, it was not run on political party lines: councillors were elected on their own merits, as evidenced by what they did, and were often stopped for discussion in the street by constituents who knew them.
If the South Holland District Council should disappear, will we be able to recall a comparable list of achievements?
And can we really expect anything as good from a bigger county establishment, which currently doesn’t even manage to keep footpaths in repair?
John Tippler
Spalding
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