Your correspondent (Echo, April 24, name and address supplied) from Kedington obviously remembers local government services from before the re-organisation in 1974.
Before long we may possibly be in a position to evaluate those services again.
At the Kedington annual parish meeting, on April 22, St Edmundsbury councillor Marion Rushbrook reported that St Edmundsbury had been asked by central government for its
views on the future of local government.
The borough's preferred system is three unitary authorities: West Suffolk, East Suffolk and Ipswich.
The term 'unitary authority' is newspeak for county borough or council.
What this means is more or less exactly what we had for 80 years from 1894.
Goodness only knows what this change entails for the education system, already preparing to change from three-tier to two.
In Kedington increased class sizes are already predicted.
Given the opposition to change in a number of localities, a reconstituted West Suffolk could just reconsider this policy.
Other services – the police, the road infrastructure and health provision – would at least be managed by an accessible body that might just be more responsive than the present one(s).
However, all this is in the realm of hypothesis, dependent on the next general election and whatever state the national economy may be in afterwards.
At least we have been warned.
John Pelling,
Kedington.
The full article contains 226 words and appears in n/a newspaper.
