Unitary vote (From Durham Times)

Unitary vote

2:25pm Friday 5th February 2010

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Sir, – Trish Johnston of the Durham Labour Party (Durham Times, January 29) is rewriting history when she claims that the official referendum in 2004 “showed a significant majority in favour of a unitary council”.

The main question in the 2004 referendum was on the Government’s proposal for an elected regional assembly for the North-East. The document explained that if (and only if) the proposal was accepted, one tier would have to be cut out of local government to make room for the new body.

So the second question on the referendum paper was what kind of unitary (ie single-tier) authority should replace the then-current two-tier system if the regional assembly were approved.

The options were a single county-wide council, or three area councils created by amalgamating two or three district councils’ areas. It is important to remember that we were not given an opportunity to vote to retain the existing system of district and county councils.

On this second question, the results in County Durham were 49 per cent for three councils and 51 per cent for a single council. In other words, despite an intensive campaign by the county council’s publicists, and the absence of any spokesman for the proposed area councils, just two people in every 100 preferred the county council to the smaller, untried, bodies – hardly a “significant majority”.

The result of the vote on the first question was an overwhelming rejection of the regional assembly, and so the justification for a unitary authority disappeared. But as we know, the Government then decided to impose a unitary authority on us anyway.

Durham City Council’s referendum was certainly unofficial and some may argue that it was flawed, but it remains the only opportunity that the residents of the city have had to express a preference for two-tier or unitary local government.

IAN FORSYTH Durham

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