WEST Devon Borough Council's leaders this week issued a robust response to Devon County Council's claims that a unitary council for Devon would result in a lower rate of council tax.

The Boundary Committee is proposing to create a single giant unitary council for Devon which would lead to the abolition of all eight district councils in Devon — including West Devon Borough Council.

If the proposal is agreed by Government, the people of Devon will have one council for around 740,000 residents spread across 2,500 square miles and be one of the largest unitary authorities in England.

The county council last week claimed a single unitary would save £29 million in the first five years after fully paying back transition costs and investing in local communities.

The county said based on setting council tax at the lowest rate of all current district, borough and city councils, new financial figures showed that all transition costs for establishing the new single unitary would be met in just three years and eight months and bring year on year savings of £19 million.

The figures were from an affordability study compiled by Devon County Council.

The payback period for a Rural Unitary Devon, (excluding Exeter, Exmouth and surrounding parishes), after initial costs of transition would take four years and eleven months, narrowly within the Government's five year payback period.

The council says ongoing savings for the Rural Devon option, year on year, after year five would be £10 million.

It claims the findings indicated that a move to a single unitary council would generate significant savings that far outweigh the initial transition costs.  

It would remove duplication, allow easier integration of related services – it would complement the current boundaries of Devon Primary Care Trust and the Police Basic Command Unit — and deliver savings in management, administration and democratic costs. 

It would also allow for efficiencies of scale, rationalisation of systems and assets, and maximise savings on commissioning and procurement.

The county council's leader, Cllr Brian Greenslade, said: 'Even if we have understated the possible savings as the independent assessment suggests, £29 million in the fifth year of a new single unitary council are huge savings.

'It would enable the new council to equalise council tax across Devon, reducing the amounts paid by households to the level of the lowest.'

But Cllr Margaret Garton, deputy leader of West Devon Borough Council, said the figures were 'unrealistic'.

She said: 'At this stage these figures have been fed into a 'Government model' and are not part of an accurate or realistic local government budget because the Government has required the whole exercise to be costed on the basis of historic 2007/08 data.

'At this stage there is no accurate information as to what the level of Government grant, rate of inflation, cost of fuel and level of pay rises will be.

'This budget is based purely on assumptions.'

Cllr Garton also questioned the savings that would come from the process.

She said: 'Past experience has shown that in large re-organisations claimed savings are frequently not achieved.

'Only in the last week it has been disclosed that the Devon Primary Care Trust, set up following the merger of all Devon district trusts, has overspent by more than £4 million in the first three months of this year. The overall aggregate budget for all local government services in Devon is currently £1.4 billion. The £29 million in savings from creating a single Devon unitary is only 2% of this total spend and barely within a margin of error.

'Devon County Council itself has said the financial case being put forward represents an initial view and is based on indicative figures only.'

The financial provision for redundancies is also unlikely to be realistic, she said.

'Again, we know from previous experience that as any new authority is about to be created, redundancies often increase in number.

'My real fear here is that the rushed government timetable for change will mean money being wasted because we are rushing into this headlong.

Cllr Garton said West Devon council leaders were convinced the unitary savings would come at a 'huge cost' to the residents of the borough, as service delivery moved away to the larger centres of population, democracy was damaged and local spending was lost.