IT WAS with a sigh of relief that I read your article on the abandonment of plans to merge local authorities, (Penarth Times, January 29). I viewed with foreboding, as I suspect did many of your readers, the thought of the Vale being merged with Bridgend. We now, it seems, have a temporary respite over the issue of local authority mergers.

However I am certain that this project will be revisited, although I suspect that it will be shunted into the long grass until after Assembly elections, which I believe take place in 2016.

The cost of the implementation of the Williams Report appears to be in the region of £100m to £200m. I suspect the higher figure will eventually be exceeded anyway. Who will pay for this? I believe that will be the long suffering council tax payer.

How much did it cost to produce the Williams report? That information does not appear to be readily available in the public domain. Let's take a stab at say £500,000 all up.

Who will pay for this? Got it in one. The long suffering council tax payer. Now, consider all of the input by all of the 22 Welsh local authorities.

How many officials, councillors, clerks, sundry advisers etc will have been involved in putting together a report for each of the authorities to consider the import of the Williams Commission? Shall we say £100,000 per local authority - £2.2m? Who will pay for this? Right again – the long suffering council tax payer. And as and when such mergers do take place there will undoubtedly be many jobs disappearing.

On January 29 all of this work (and the money to fund it) went down the plughole as Leighton Andrews decided that none of the proposed mergers by the six local authorities who responded to his demands for a proposal to be in the WAG hands by the end of January was considered fit for purpose.

So all of that money has been completely wasted, back to the drawing board and start again. The only consolation for the council tax payer is that the matter has now been well and truly flagged up and hopefully will be much more carefully scrutinised at the next attempt.

But, the one thing that appears to have been missed out in this exercise is the opinion of the council tax payers.

Speaking as a Penarth resident of 21 years, my opinion, and that of a number of Penarth people with whom I have discussed the matter, is that if Penarth should be merged anywhere it should be with Cardiff, where Penarth would appear have a much greater empathy rather than merging via the Vale with Bridgend – and I have no doubt a darned sight cheaper too.

A referendum of Penarth residents would perhaps be the most democratic way to determine which would be the preferable merger. With council tax in Bridgend stated to be higher than the Vale then chances are the Vale rate will be lifted to come into line with Bridgend.

Penarth Times readers can get a very detailed and thought provoking analysis of the situation by reading an article by Jeff Jones entitled 'Why this Williams Commission won't save Wales a penny'. It makes very interesting reading. It can be found on the web page Wales Online – edition of January 27 2014. I commend it to your readers.

Roger D Mundy

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