The video below discusses the most efficient, democratic and cost effective way for West Sussex to re-organise from a two-tier local Government model to a single tier Unitary Authority model that is highly efficient and saves the most in Council Tax.
Notes on Supporting Data
The creation of this video required a number of calculations and data - key to
this is that a £6 million increase or decrease in spending is equivalent to 1%
on County Council Tax - this was accurate when calculating the County Council
tax for the 2025.26 budget.
The most recent annual budget figures show the budget for West Sussex County
Council is £2,226 million. The sum for all District and Borough Councils when
added together is £179 million.
The figures quoted are based on a 2025 analysis conducted by Price Waterhouse
Cooper HERE is
the link to the amalgamated analysis. The numbers from the Sussex part of the
analysis that were used in the video are reproduced below.
Single Unitary Authority
(to the nearest £million)
Five Year Impact of Disaggregation
£0
Net Benefit after Five Years
£125 million
Recurring (annual) Benefit after Five Years £30
million
Two Unitary Authorities
(to the nearest £million)
Five Year Impact of
Disaggregation
- £104 million (this is a cost!)
Net Benefit after Five Years
£21 million
Recurring (annual) Benefit after Five Years
£11 million
The impact of a
three unitary model was not mentioned. However, it's reproduced below.
Three Unitary Authorities
(to the nearest
£million)
Five Year Impact of
Disaggregation
- £173 million (this is a cost!)
Net Benefit after Five Years
- £48 million (this
is a cost!)
Recurring (annual) Benefit after Five Years - £2
million (this is a cost!)
Here is the transcript from the video.
"Hello, I'm Andy McGregor West Sussex County Councillor and Adur District Councillor and I'm going to speak about the 21% saving £374 pounds a band D taxpayer would save if we adopt a single Unitary Authority for West Sussex.
However, the saving would just be 3.5% £63 pounds if a two unitary authority model is adopted. Why the big difference? It's all down to council spending. Council spending is £2,405 million pounds a year. The objective of the government's devolution project is to bring this down by being more efficient and effective by moving from two tiers of local government to one.
And if we have a look at this simple pie chart, West Sussex spending on council services is £2,226 million (blue) and makes up 92.6% of all council spending. The seven Districts and Boroughs spend the other £179 million (red).
Significant savings will be made by aggregating the services provided by the District and Borough councils. However, splitting the council in two doesn't simply divide the spending into two equal halves. There will be a dis-aggregation cost if the services provided by the council are split in two. That simple pen stroke is estimated to cost £104 million in the first five years. £311 for that Band D council tax payer.
Then there's the ongoing costs of two chief executives, two boards of directors two heads of service, two sets of offices, two groups of councillors, etc, etc, etc. The difference is £20 million a year - yet another £60 on the bill every year of that hard pressed band D council tax payer.
And all the District and Borough councils are Labour or Liberal Democrat controlled. And all of them are recommending the two Unitary model for West Sussex. They say a Unitary Authority of 870,000 people covering the whole of West Sussex is too big.
However, when quizzed on the subject at a recent debate, the Labour leader of Adur District Council could only say that we should look at the example of big Unitary Authorities like Birmingham and shy away. However, West Sussex is not Birmingham. We're in the affluent South East. We have a very different economy An economy where the Conservative controlled county council have balanced the books for 92.6% of council spending for many years.
When presented with the figures, I've told you the Labour leader of Adur defended the two unitary authority model by saying the services like schools, education, social services adult services children's services libraries, etc, etc could possibly remain as a single department and serve both unitary authorities.
For a start. I think this is just a guess, maybe a hope. A department with two masters could easily be pulled in two different directions by differences in council policies. I don't think it would work, and neither do many others.
Why not simply retain the departments as they are in West Sussex? Single departments servicing the whole of West Sussex in a single Unitary Authority. To keep things at peak efficiency - and make the big savings by aggregating the services provided by the Districts and Boroughs into a single Unitary Authority. Something I've wondered myself.
The simple answer is that Labour and the Liberal Democrats are, I suspect, playing political games and, as is the habit of parties of the left planning to waste our money on their ideas.
