Murray Rowlands suggests that a study of the Tories’ abysmal management of Surrey is a pointer to how they would govern Britain
SURREY may be the richest area in Britain, but to judge by the woeful performance of its Tory-controlled local government it can be described as a failing county.
For a start, what can you say about a county whose main centre of governance is not even within its own boundaries? To be fair, successive Conservative administrations which have presided over Surrey County, seemingly since time began, have made attempts to move from Kingston upon Thames to somewhere more sensible. The first attempt to relocate to Guildford came to grief when a mass NIMBY movement prevented a county hall being built on parkland in the centre of the city. More recently, an attempt to move to Woking also collapsed, leaving a mountain of debt and the main focus of county government still outside Surrey boundaries.
A whole series of disasters reflects the consequence of pursuing an ideology that puts the benefits of market systems above the requirement of local government to provide reliable services for the community it serves. The story of Surrey provides an excellent illustration for some misguided elements in the Labour Party of the calamitous consequences of assuming the “free” market is the be-all and end-all. The Conservatives justify their failings by claiming they are victims of a rate support grant system which favours Britain’s poorer areas at Surrey’s expense. The fact that Surrey County Council saw fit to deposit £20 million in an Icelandic bank and undoubtedly has other sums secreted away does not quite square with its plea of financial crisis.
It is easy to suspect that some Conservatives in Surrey may not be of this world. While the results of a recent Ofsted inspection identify the county as among the country’s six worst services providers for vulnerable children, a recent full meeting of the county council debated national identity cards at length (an issue which does not come under its remit), but refused to discuss the reality of its inadequate care of vulnerable children (an issue which most certainly does fall within its jurisdiction).
And Surrey county councillors should also have contemplated the thousands of pounds which the local authority has spent on golden handshakes as a consequence of the continuous cycle of reorganisations recommended by external business consultants.
It has taken a former Tory MP, Terry Dix, to identify the £500,000 to £1 million which as been squandered in this way. While Surrey’s spending on public relations is among the highest in the country, even Dix using the Freedom of Information Act was unable to learn the full cost of moving professional staff and their responsibilities around like yo-yos.
It is hard to find one element of the services supplied by Surrey that is above serious criticism. Severe problems with highway maintenance were uncovered when it was discovered that the company with a virtual monopoly of road maintenance work in the county was not carrying out repairs properly and was not being adequately supervised.
Meanwhile, the county council is content to claim an improving education service by pointing to statistics showing better GCSE results. However, these are only in line with better results throughout the rest of the United Kingdom. What is ignored is one of the highest absence from school rates in the country’s most prosperous county.
A reflection of how business is allowed to take priority over the lives of vulnerable groups in Surrey is shown by moves made to close the sole residential facility for adults with learning difficulties in the Surrey Heath area.
Surrey ignores the huge waiting lists for affordable homes within its borders and concentrates on resistance to the Labour Government’s plans to build more such urgently needed properties.
Between them, the almost completely Conservative-controlled county and borough administrations have failed to agree a way in which the Government grant to facilitate free travel for the over 60s can be equitably distributed. As a result, boroughs such as Surrey Heath can use a shortfall in funding to not allow travel for the over 60s before 9.30am.
Care for the elderly in Surrey has been described by the GMB union as “abysmal”. The verdict of the Commission for Social Care in this area was hardly more encouraging after a recent inspection. Surrey achieved just a single star when a good standard required three stars.
Nick Skellett, the Tory leader of Surrey County Council, admits that Surrey has been forced into “difficult and uncomfortable decisions” which result in frequent changes to the provision of care for the elderly. Unsurprisingly, he blames under-funding from Westminster for the problem.
One might expect that at least Surrey Tories would be able to get it right on managing the electoral process. Unfortunately, Surrey proved itself unable to decide whether the recent death of a county councillor merited a by-election although there are still several months to go until this year’s county council elections. Surrey Heath – the borough concerned – was adamant that a by-election was not warranted. However, Surrey County Council eventually published a notice calling for the by-election process to begin. It then changed its mind and decided that a by-election should not be held. However, only the Tories’ indecision should be regarded as final.
If Surrey is a showpiece for what the experience of a David Cameron government at Westminster would be like, it is a very disturbing one. Fortunately, although elections in the counties of England are scheduled for June 2009, Gordon Brown is likely to delay calling a general election until he has to in 2010. So perhaps there may still be an opportunity for the British electorate to examine how badly Surrey is being governed and spurn the tribal instincts often associated with national voting.
The failure of Surrey is closely tied up with the first-past-the- post electoral system for local government. If the governance of Surrey more genuinely reflected the make-up of its community, some of its continual litany of failure might be avoided. Unfortunately, no matter how small the turnout for the local elections in Surrey, the vote is still likely to be more of a referendum on Brown’s Government and not an honest appraisal of the manifest inadequacy of Surrey County Council.
