It’s loud and clear – East Cambs residents do not support the merger of district and county councils into a larger unitary authority.
In a survey carried out by the council and completed by more than 700 residents, 81 per cent said they did not support the idea of councils merging.
A total of 93% felt it was very important to have access to a local councillor.
And 94% would like to be engaged more on the issue of local government reorganisation
In comments many people referred to their appreciation of the council’s local knowledge and experience when it came to making the best choices for the district and residents.
Council leader, Cllr Anna Bailey said: “The people of East Cambridgeshire have spoken – and what they have said is loud and clear. They love our council, and they cannot see any benefit with merging us with other county and district councils to provide services on a larger scale.
“While we don’t yet have the detail of what the merger will look like, in my opinion, the sad fact of the matter is what East Cambs risks losing far outstrips what it is likely to gain.
“Here in East Cambs we’ve kept our element of the Council Tax frozen for 12 years, we have no external debt, meaning we do not have to use tax payers' money paying debt interest payments and we have a balanced budget.
“Added to this we offer a free garden bin collection service, free parking in Ely, Littleport and Soham, face to face support for people who need financial help and advice, and we help local people buy affordable homes through our support of Community Land Trusts and £100k Homes.
“Central to the role of local democracy is also enabling residents to have easy access to councillors. Any merger is likely to mean fewer councillors, with greater workloads.
“I make no bones about it – all that East Cambs stands for may be put at risk and that is clearly against the wishes of local people.”
The government announced its plans to abolish district and county councils and replace them with larger unitary councils serving populations of around 500,000 as part of a White Paper published in December 2024.
Since then, council leaders and chief executives have been working together to develop a shared understanding of potential options for how Local Government Reorganisation could work in our region.
A Special Council Meeting will take place at the council on 20 March to consider a preliminary submission to government about how East Cambs intends to develop the proposals for unitary authorities with the other Cambridgeshire and Peterborough councils.
The following day a joint letter outlining what the 7 councils in the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority plan to do to progress Local Government Reorganisation will be submitted to government.
We will not know the make-up of the new unitary councils at this stage, but work will begin at pace with a view to a new unitary council going live by April 2028.
Anna added: “We will be sharing our survey results with the other councils and will be undertaking a mix of formal and informal consultation with residents before then. This is definitely going to happen and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it, but what we will do – and I promise this from the bottom of my heart – is fight for the very best deal we can get for East Cambs and its residents.”
More information and links to the Have Your Say East Cambs survey are available on the homepage of the council’s website.