The reorganisation of Devon into four unitary councils, announced by the government today (16 July), is a bonanza for the three urban authorities created, and a disaster for the rest of rural Devon, according to Devon CPRE.
The proposals will create expanded authority areas for Plymouth, Exeter and Torbay, with the fourth authority left to cover all the rest of Devon.
“Of course, the urban unitaries are welcoming this, because they’ve expanded their empires and claim they can cut council tax by removing costs. But what they are not telling you is that a vast rural area like Devon requires its few urban settlements to help pay the enormous costs of roads, education, social care etc in the 2,500 square miles that are left now they have opted out”, said Devon CPRE chairman Steve Crowther.
“This has been described as a disaster by all the leaders and representatives not involved in those three enclaves – because they know that an area stretching from Salcombe to Lynton, from Hartland to Axminster is going to have a monumental struggle to provide the services it needs without a significant urban contribution. Plus, the ‘Local Planning Authority’ for many people will be 50 miles away.
“There are areas of Rural Devon which have some of the lowest incomes in the entire country. Livestock-grazing farmers, of which Devon has a preponderance because of our world-beating pastureland, have seen their average incomes drop to less than £23,000 in recent years. You can make more on benefits, without having to work 12-hour days, 365 days a year to maintain this glorious Devon landscape that’s loved and valued by people from all over England.
“This plan clearly demonstrates, yet again, that Westminster has no understanding whatever of what happens outside the cities, of the precarious economics of rural England in general and Devon in particular, and cares even less. Already they have summarily and suddenly turned off the agricultural subsidies that many Devonian farmers depend on, and hit them with Inheritance Tax on theoretically-valuable land that yields their families barely subsistence-level incomes.
“Devon depends heavily on landscape-based and coastal tourism – yet at the same time we’re a top target for the government’s new uses for our agricultural landscapes, like massive solar farms and now, it appears, gigantic data centres and containerised battery ‘parks’ on our fields. Just the sort of things that we’re already hearing are causing people to think twice about moving here, let alone coming here for their holidays. And the beneficiaries are huge corporate business and offshore investors, not the people whose land is being taken.
“The government really needs to tell us, without delay, how they are going to ensure that rural Devonians don’t have a massive increase in their taxes in return for a reduction in essential services.”