I SENT a letter regarding “Coxit” to all Gloucestershire County (GCC) councillors, Cotswold District (CDC) councillors and Tetbury town councillors. 

I received replies from Conservative, Labour, Lib-Dem and Independent councillors. 

Not one reply sought to support the notion.

I received no reply from Councillor Stowe who seems in your pages keen to pursue it.

From what I have seen thus far, I can see no good community/social reason for such a merger into a unitary authority.

As residents, we are not numerical units, but real people and real communities which have a right to look to councils to join with us in our search for the best possible quality of life as they plan and organise the public and social well-being of our area, using our money to do so. 

We have already seen financial benefit in joining with West Oxfordshire for some bureaucratic, non-public interfacing functions. 

However, the quality of life for communities and individuals are already diminished by anti-social CDC, GCC and Whitehall cutbacks in the form of reductions/closures in such basic community activities as policing, police stations, crime prevention, fire stations and services, children centres, Sure Start [children’s centres], and libraries, day centres for the elderly and disabled, home care for the elderly and ill, quality of roads/pavements, careers advice, health and education services.

Moving to a unitary authority with this backdrop would be far more disruptive to Cotswoldians in our daily dealings with the council and I fear that some employees would lose their jobs, whilst others would find themselves re-assigned – all through no fault of their own or through a lack of need. 

Looking across the country, I do feel that it is time that local councils stood up to Whitehall to protect our communities and individuals, instead of accepting whatever financial cutbacks are rained down upon us or used as an excuse for disruption and degradation of communities.

Thus, the proposal has to me increasingly the feel more of some kind of “vanity project” based on I know not what.

It is time to look at the Cotswolds as many and diverse human communities to be enhanced and supported and in need of finance to support that wellbeing – not the other way round. Enough is enough.

LINDA WOOLLEY
Tetbury