I WAS pleased to see that Cllrs Hall and Turner in their letter to BFP on November 28 supported a unitary council (or two) to replace Bucks County Council and the four district councils.

In my letter in the BFP on November 7, I advocated two unitaries by amalgamating Aylesbury Vale with Milton Keynes BC and the three southern district councils. My reasoning is that Buckinghamshire is a very stretched geographical entity some 40 miles in length by 15 miles wide with not very good north/south road infrastructure. It makes the practical concept of localism difficult to create. Bedfordshire, a new unitary, is much more compact.

The Ernst and Young study looked at four models – a single unitary based on Bucks County Council,two separate unitaries,an out-of-county unitary – which presumably meant taking in part of Oxfordshire – and a single unitary linked with a single district council. It recommended a single unitary based on Bucks County Council, ironically the most ineffective deliverer of services as I pointed out in my letter, to which the leader of Bucks County Council could only respond that its tasks were more difficult than those of a district council!

Cllr Tett misled your readers in claiming that the Ernst and Young study had investigated my proposal to combine Aylesbury Vale with Milton Keynes Borough Council, a unitary since 1997, and the creation of a new unitary covering Chiltern District Council,South Bucks District Council and Wycombe District Council. This would create two much more compact unitaries where residents could feel more involved without setting up additional expensive local structures such as local area forums to create the illusion of localism.

It would mean setting up one new unitary as Aylesbury Vale would be grafted onto an existing unitary. Incidentally, it is already a member of the South Midland Local Enterprise Partnership which incorporates Milton Keynes.

My motivation in pursuing this crusade is neither personal nor political, but a conviction that compact unitaries are created that will provide the best possible services and the best value for money for all the residents of Buckinghamshire.

I would suggest Bucks Business First request Ernst and Young to look at this proposal. - Cllr Roger Colomb, Independent (Real Conservative)