Unitary rules out setting up town council for High Wycombe after low response to consultation

Buckinghamshire Council has rejected the idea of creating a town council for High Wycombe after it said a public consultation showed minimal support for the idea.

A county unitary council was created in Buckinghamshire in 2020 replacing among others the former Wycombe District Council.

Local campaigners had called for a town council to take control over some local matters, but the consultation results did not support this.

A full council meeting heard from its standards and general purposes committee that it should instead “strengthen the current governance arrangements so that they can deliver improvements in the High Wycombe area”.

Committee chair David Goss said: “It was clear from the very low response that there was just not a widespread appetite for creating a town council.

“We were also very conscious that only 1.9% of the total local population (55,000 people) were prepared to meet the costs of a new local council and the committee concluded that did not give us a mandate to impose additional taxation on Wycombe residents.”

The committee said it had been “particularly struck that the response rate did not even meet the threshold in the legislation that would have been necessary to trigger a community governance petition”,which would be 7.5% of electors.

Of the 55,125 eligible electors, 1,517 responded in support of a town council and 885 preferred the status quo.

While 1,087 respondents were prepared to pay for a new town council, 1,162 were not.

Support for the change “was not consistently evident across age, gender, ethnicity, disability, affluence or location” and the committee concludes this meant introducing  a town council “may well be a polarising step which would not be conducive to community cohesion”.

Cllr Goss said though that residents had wanted to see improvements in the town and the county would work with the consultative High Wycombe town committee “to ensure it is in a better position to respond to local issues”.

Mark Smulian