DEAR editor,

Some Vale of Glamorgan councillors have recently commented on the Welsh Government's proposals to merge councils in Wales and reduce their number to either eight or nine.

The leader, Councillor Moore, has convinced himself that he is leading the best authority following some comforting words in selected reports and he believes the council should be left alone because of this perceived status.

I disagree, but even if he was correct, the changes are not a beauty contest but more about delivering better and more efficient services for the whole of Wales.

Recently in the local press, Cllrs Mahoney and Clarke have taken a different position, supporting the need to reduce the number of councils, despite all the scare stories from many other Vale of Glamorgan councillors.

I support the need to reduce the number of councils and the 1,254 councillors: we have far, far too many elected representatives in Wales when compared with other parts of the UK and Scotland, with almost double the population, has less councillors than Wales.

My graph shows the average population per councillor from the councils that I’ve researched together with Wales and Scotland. With a much larger population Scottish councillors have just less than double the number of constituents than Welsh councillors and Cardiff has just less than twice as many constituents as VoG councillors.

If we are to merge surely Cardiff would be the best bet. Ignore the clear self-interest of the political parties, the scare stories and your view of the capability of politicians on both councils, and then take a hard look at the realities.

We have a dynamic capital city on our doorstep, bursting with economic activity; it has first class facilities in terms of shopping, amenities and leisure, and the employment opportunities for our community are significant. Personalities will change on a new merged council and the number of councillors should fall from a combined 122 to 75, that's about a £1 million saving each year on councillors’ payments alone.

A measure of our commonality with Cardiff is the number of people travelling to Cardiff every day: 20,500 daily commutes from the Vale.

And oh, by the way, the Minister Leighton Andrews believes Wales can save £650 million over 10 years.

Dennis Harkus

FocusBARRY member