Our Shire Counties

I am a very firm believer in our Shire Counties. I am a Lincolnshire man by birth and a Staffordshire man by adoption - and I am proud of both Counties. I love the beauty of their scenery. I am fascinated by their history. I feel a sense of real identity with both. What I feel no sense of identify with is some artificially created West Midland Region.

We will shortly, I fear, be having proposals from the Government that our historic Shire Counties should be absorbed in, and replaced by, Regional Authorities. Although the proposal will be that those Authorities should be directly elected they will be far more remote from the people than our County Councils. I would be very surprised indeed if many readers of this column would like to see the Staffordshire County Council scrapped and replaced by a regional bureaucracy ruled from, and dominated by, Birmingham. Birmingham is a great and fine City but it is not part of Staffordshire any more than it is part of Worcestershire or Herefordshire.

The Government's recent proposals for changing our planning laws would pave the way for regional government. The proposals advocate “Regional Spatial Strategies” - whatever they might be. They propose the abolition of County Structure Plans. That means that all the key decisions which are now taken in Staffordshire would be taken elsewhere. Do the villagers of Brewood or Penkridge really want to be told by bureaucrats in Birmingham how many new houses should be built in the green fields around their villages? Although no-one could pretend that our planning law is incapable of improvement the centralisation that is implicit in the proposals in the Green Paper would be very dangerous. For instance, the Government is proposing to hand the power to decide the principle and location of major projects such as ports and airports to Parliament and to abolish the local Public Inquiry.

The Green Paper is not all bad. I welcome the proposals which could make the planning system more accessible to the community at local level, by reducing charges for photocopying and encouraging local authorities to allow the public to speak at planning meetings. Nevertheless the fact is that the impact of welcome changes will be overshadowed by the effect of the total package.

All in all these are threatening proposals and they would pave the way for a system of Regional Government which would be remote, bureaucratic and authoritarian. Long live Staffordshire.