Where will the money for these Community Boards come from?

There is potentially a lot of money to be saved from reducing the current bureaucracy created by having a County Council providing 85% of your local government services and another 8 District Councils providing the remaining 15% of those services.

A single unitary Council would not to have nine Chief Executives or eight different refuse collection services, or different computer systems.   It wouldn’t need to have as many councillors or all the administrative services and offices necessary to support nine different councils.

The concept is that those big savings could be used to pay for the cost of reorganisation and free up money to be spent by the Community Boards on local priorities.

But won’t that take money away from existing services?

No, 85% of your local government services are already provided and paid for by the County Council.  As long they are not disrupted by breaking up Devon into smaller unitary councils, the cost of reorganisation can be kept to the absolute minimum and make the best use of the savings made from cutting the number of councils from nine now to just one without damaging the quality of your services.

In fact, a single Unitary Council for the whole of Devon, excluding Plymouth and Torbay, with a population of 750,000 will be big enough to support all the current County Council and District Council services.

Will a unitary council reduce Council Tax?

Unlike the current County and District Councils, a single unitary Council would not have nine Chief Executives or eight different refuse collection services, or different computer systems.   It wouldn’t need to have as many councillors or all the administrative services and offices necessary to support nine different councils.

Those big savings could be used to pay for the cost of reorganisation and free up money to be spent by the Community Boards on local priorities.

Over time, the County Council envisages that those savings will reduce the burden on Council Tax-payers by slashing the costs of bureaucracy caused by having nine councils in Devon as we do at the moment.  Decisions on the level of Council Tax would need to be taken by the unitary Council.

How much money will each Community Board have and what could it be spent on?

Ultimately that will be the decision for the new Unitary Council, but the best chance of generating real savings that can be spent on local priorities will only come from creating a single unitary council for Devon, excluding Plymouth and Torbay.

The County and District Councils currently spend £1.4 billion of public money each year. For illustration purposes only, we have said that a very modest saving of just 0.5% on that total budget would produce an average annual budget for local Community Boards of £200,000 for each of the 28 market and coastal towns in Devon and their surrounding parishes.

What the money is spent on will be entirely up to each Community Boards in consultation with local people. In one area they may decide to provide more facilities for young people, in another they may decide to improve their village halls or extend the library opening hours or provide an additional bus service. It will be for the community to decide.

Will there be any financial cost to Parish Councils if they have delegated responsibilities as part of the local Community Board arrangements?

We are still in the very early stages of the process, but it is clear from the Boundary Committee's proposal that Parish Councils would have the choice to take on delegated responsibilities - there would be no compulsion to do so. Any services delegated to Parish Councils will come with funding. Devon County Council is currently talking to Parish Councils across the county to develop the concept of the unitary council's Community Boards and the inter-relationship with Town and Parish Councils. Part of that is to develop a menu of sorts of the kind of services which could be devolved to Town and Parish Councils.