I hold Alec Samuels in the highest regard and enjoy reading his pertinent and sometimes trenchant letters to The Echo. However, I do question some of his objections to a potential Combined Authority to serve Hampshire.

This is not proposing an “extra” tier of government but rather a way to get existing tiers and neighbours to work together especially where a bigger scale of action is needed but without the cost of setting up totally new bureaucracies

I cannot agree that Hampshire is an anomaly. It may be ancient but it means something to its residents and is one of the most efficient counties in the country. Any new boundary would be quite arbitrary just as the boundaries of the LEPs are artificial. I hear the term functional economic areas but Hampshire has a very complex economic geography and many people may live in the south of Hampshire but work say in Winchester or similarly live in Petersfield and work in Portsmouth. It’s salutary to stand on Winchester railway station and see the numbers of people daily travelling northwards and southwards. Quite simply I ask Alec where would he put Winchester or Chandlers Ford or Totton or the rural area around Romsey that I represent for example? Are they in his north, south, or central divisions?

Hampshire is served by one police authority, one fire authority and has a single Health service STP. Local government needs to be on a similar scale for the big strategic issues but keeping districts and indeed parishes for more local matters as well as the unitaries.

To split Hampshire into 2 or 3 as Alec suggests would be an extremely expensive and disruptive exercise. Co-operating together is a lot cheaper and makes more sense.

As recently as September 2015 all 11 District Council leaders in Hampshire, (many of whom are still in post), plus the leaders of the 3 unitaries of Southampton, Portsmouth and Isle of Wight and the heads of the 2 National Parks and the 2 LEPS, and myself as Leader of the County Council signed up to a possible combined authority for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. There was agreement on the concept but it floundered on the insistence then of having an elected Mayor.

I have asked my fellow council leaders now that the insistence on a Directly Elected Mayor (which definitely would have introduced a whole new expensive tier of government) has been removed to see if there is an appetite for a combined authority where we keep a role for the district councils. If there is no such appetite then I suspect the Government may want start down the road of imposing a single unitary council like Wiltshire and now Buckinghamshire. That really would save money but is it what we want.

Councillor Roy Perry

Leader

Hampshire County Council