Regional vs County

[benji]

(Ok here is my attempt at a first posting)

Over the last few months I have taken note of the following news items on Grampian news:

-Aberdeen City Council selling off property way below its market value
-Aberdeenshire Council making a mess of the Trump Golf Course application
-Highland Council not listening to the opinion of many in Caithness over bi-lingual signs
-A Highland councillor using her fame to complain about parking charges and how its stops her from wearing her high heels (!!!!)
-Highland Council being less than enthusiastic over the fabric of secondary schools

Not wanting to get into a debate about the details of these I wonder whether the time has come to disband the Regional Councils and bring back the old County Councils.

Thoughts?

[Whitewater]

The Highland Council should have been disbanded years ago. Their only interest is Inverness, the other areas may as well not be there. Our local councillors, no matter how good they are can easily be outvoted. The classic exaple of this was the proposed closure of the Maternity wing in Wick Central, supposed consultants were sent up to try to give the impression it was being done fairly, during the couse of events it was discovered that there minds were made up before the exercise took place, fortunately they underestimated the determination of the local population led by some of our local councillors. But having said that, I don't think we can revert back to the Regions, the Scottish Parlament would never allow that to happen. Control of all our emergency services has been centralised, people are answering SOS calls, and don't have a clue about local geography, they can't give good advice to any of the services which have to respond to calls in isolated areas. However, it is not only happening here, but unfortunately, throughout the rest of the Britain as well

[theone]

More councils mean more councillors, more people getting paid for deciding what to do and less money being spent on those who are doing it. Not a good move in my opinion.

In saying that, there should be ways to keep "local" decisions more local.

[benji]

just to be clear I am talking about calling a halt to Highland Regional Council completely and the reinstatement of county councils NOT an additional tier of government

[Moi x]

Benji, regional and district councils were disbanded twelve years ago. IIRC Highland Council is the only regional council that wasn't split into its constituent parts when regional and district councils were combined into unitary councils. More details are here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subdivisions_of_Scotland) and here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_%28council_area%29).

I agree that Highland Council covers an area that's far too big. A council area stretching from John O'Groats to Fort William is ludicrous in my opinion.

Moi x