Cheltenham – Adam Tugwell

The decision to abolish Gloucestershire’s six district councils and replace them with a single unitary authority is being presented as modernisation – a way to save money, streamline services, and “bring power closer to people”. But what is happening in Gloucestershire is part of a much bigger national pattern, and its consequences reach far beyond council boundaries.

This is not just administrative reform. It is the removal of an entire layer of democratic representation. And it is happening without a mandate, without a plebiscite, and without meaningful public consent.

The sales pitch: cost savings and efficiency

The Government’s argument is simple:

One council instead of seven
Fewer managers
Shared back‑office functions
Lower overheads
“Joined‑up services”

But Gloucestershire has already been delivering shared services for years. Ubico, shared legal teams, joint waste contracts, pooled planning policy work – these arrangements already exist and already save money.

So the real question is this:

If shared services save money, why abolish the councils themselves?

This is where the core truth sits:

Public services are a cost to be saved. Democracy is not.

Supporters of unitarisation argue that residents care more about effective services than institutional structures, and that streamlined governance can reduce duplication and improve outcomes.

That argument deserves consideration. But efficiency and representation are not interchangeable values. A system can be administratively cleaner while being democratically weaker.

The democratic layer being abolished is one that people can actually reach

People rarely contact MPs for everyday issues. They sometimes contact county councillors. But they do contact district and borough councillors – because they are accessible, local, and directly connected to the issues that shape daily life.

Planning. Licensing. Housing. Environmental health. Local development. These are not abstract policy areas. They are the things people feel.

District councillors are among the most accessible and consequential democratic representatives in England. Abolishing them anywhere removes one of the few layers of democratic power that people can routinely reach, challenge, and hold to account.

Parish and town councils: accessible but powerless

Parish and town councillors are arguably the most accessible representatives of all. But they do not hold meaningful authority.

They deal with dog bins, bus shelters, flower beds, small grants, and being “consulted” on planning applications they cannot decide.

This is not power. It is administrative housekeeping.

And while parish and town councils should be dealing with more, they aren’t – because their powers have been systematically stripped away.

Removing district councils leaves a democratic vacuum that parish councils cannot fill.

As argued in the linked Cheltenham town council piece, parish and town councils may be necessary if borough-level representation disappears, but they are not an equivalent democratic substitute. They can help preserve local civic identity, but they cannot replace the statutory powers, responsibilities, and political weight of district councils.

Fewer political posts means fewer choices – and fewer independents

A unitary authority means:

Fewer councillors
Larger divisions
Bigger campaign areas
Higher barriers to entry
More professionalised politics
More reliance on party machines
Fewer independents
Fewer small‑party candidates
Less diversity of representation

This is not good for democracy. It is not good for communities. And it is not good for anyone who believes politics should be open to ordinary people, not just those backed by national party resources.

The fewer the seats, the fewer the voices.

The direction of travel: regionalisation

County councillors are more accessible than MPs – but they are still far less accessible than district councillors. And once districts are gone, counties become the natural building blocks for the next stage of restructuring:

Regional mayors. Regional authorities. Regional governorships.

This is already happening across England:

Greater Manchester
West Midlands
West Yorkshire
Tees Valley
North East
East Midlands
Liverpool City Region

Critics of regionalisation argue that many of these arrangements began with the language of shared services and combined authorities, before moving towards directly elected regional mayors and larger strategic bodies with significant executive influence.

Gloucestershire may now be being positioned for the same trajectory.

Unitarisation is not the end. It is a stepping stone.

This is the concern set out in the linked piece on Regional Centralisation: that the language of devolution can conceal the movement of power away from local communities and towards larger, more remote political structures.

The biggest democratic problem: no mandate, no plebiscite, no consent

This is the heart of the issue.

Local people did not vote directly for this. The public was not asked through a referendum or plebiscite. Voters were not given a clear democratic choice on whether this layer of representation should disappear.

The “consultation” was lip service – a procedural box‑tick that allows officials to say:

“We asked, and you had the opportunity to speak.”

But the public did not get a real choice. They did not get a referendum. They did not get a plebiscite. They did not get a meaningful democratic process.

This is the removal of integral parts of the democratic system. It is constitutional change because it alters who citizens can elect, how close decision-makers are to the communities they serve, the number of elected representatives available to scrutinise power, and the scale at which local decisions are made.

It is structural change. It is irreversible change.

And it is being done without the one thing that makes change legitimate:

The informed consent of voters.

There is one democratic reform that does not require direct public consent in the same way: genuine devolution of power from the centre to communities. If Whitehall gives people more power, more control, and more local choice, that is an expansion of democracy.

But this is not that. This does not move power downwards. It removes a local democratic layer and concentrates authority further away from the people affected by it.

Politicians should not be deciding this. Voters should.

The truth: this is not reform – it is centralisation

The Gloucestershire unitary authority is being presented as modernisation. But it is part of a national pattern:

Fewer councils
Fewer councillors
Fewer elections
Larger authorities
More distant decision‑making
More insulated leadership
More regionalisation
Less accountability
Less representation
Less choice
Less democracy

This is not bringing power closer to people. It is removing it from the places where people can actually reach it.

And the core truth remains:

Public services are a cost to be saved. Democracy is not.

Conclusion: Gloucestershire is the warning – England is the subject

What is happening in Gloucestershire is not unique. It is not isolated. It is not accidental.

It is part of a national restructuring of English democracy – one that is happening quietly, without a mandate, without a vote, and without the public understanding what is being taken away.

The question is no longer whether shared services can save money. They can. They already do.

The question is whether democracy should be sacrificed in the process.

The debate is not really about council structures. It is about who should decide how local democracy is organised.

If elected layers of government can be abolished without direct public approval, the question is not merely what kind of councils England wants. It is what role voters themselves are expected to play in determining the future of democratic representation.

The arguments above draw on two earlier pieces that explore the same democratic problem from different angles: first, what should happen locally if borough-level representation disappears; and second, how the language of devolution can be used to justify regional centralisation without a direct public mandate.

If the Borough Goes, Cheltenham Must Have a Town Council

This piece argues that if Cheltenham Borough Council is abolished, a town council becomes necessary to preserve civic identity and local representation. However, it also makes clear that town and parish councils are not a full substitute for borough or district councils because they lack the same statutory powers and democratic weight.

Regional Centralisation: The Rewriting of England’s Democracy Without a Mandate

This piece examines the growth of regional mayoralties and combined authorities, arguing that what is often described as devolution may in practice become regional centralisation. It develops the point that genuine devolution means transferring power downwards to communities, not replacing accessible local democracy with larger and more distant political structures.

Gloucestershires Unitary Authority PDF_Vers1_17Jul26 Download

It’s two weeks since the 2025 Gold Cup was run at Cheltenham Racecourse, and like many Cheltonians who execute a ‘race week survival plan’ each March, I would nonetheless hate to see Cheltenham Festival end or get any smaller than it now appears to be.

Growing up around Cheltenham certainly meant needing to become aware of how to avoid the impact of road closures, diversions and very heavy traffic as the Racegoers come in and as they leave each day. But the inconvenience somehow always felt like it was worth it for the extra business that it brought into the Town and wider area, which for some like local Taxi drivers in the past meant a bumper week that made the rest of the year not only financially viable, but also worthwhile.

Those following attendance figures during this year’s Festival week will have noted that there was a further significant drop in attendance, particularly during the earlier part of the week, which continues to follow an annual trend.

Whilst the price of a pint of Guinness at the Racecourse has become a guide of what the cost of attending any of the Race Days might now be, it is increasingly difficult to believe that the number of punters is dropping as quickly as it now is, just because of the price of the beer for the number of hours that you become part of the captive marketplace beyond the turnstiles.

The prices of drinks at large events certainly disincentivises attendance. As a follower of Gloucester Rugby, the premium charged for pints once within Kingsholm Stadium certainly make you think twice about buying a ticket. Especially when premium matches are themselves an increasingly expensive purchase for the demographics of people who have historically snapped each kind up.

However, there is one big difference between local races and ‘the rugby’: Most of the people who regularly watch matches at Kingsholm are from the local area and go home after the match. Most of those attending the ‘showcase’ event at Cheltenham Racecourse are not.

In a post-Festival interview with the local media, new Racecourse CEO Guy Lavendar acknowledged that the prices of accommodation for Race Week have begun to play a part in the problem telling Gloucestershire Live “We have heard both anecdotally and directly that the cost of accommodation is impacting attendance.”

Whilst I considered writing a blog about this a fortnight ago, it wasn’t until I called in to one of Cheltenham’s pubs yesterday and asked the Bar Manager how Race Week had been, that I started to see a much broader issue at work. One that is reaching far beyond the people most likely to have stepped back from going to an event like this one, because of the cost of living crisis and what that means when they question whether they can afford to buy a pint.

As Race Week kicked off, the media were carrying stories about punters traveling to Benidorm for Cheltenham via big screens. Simply because the cost of travel, good quality hotels, a constant flow of cheap pints throughout the week and better weather were making this alternative way to ‘go to the races’ appeal in a very different, but considerably more economically attractive way.

What I hadn’t expected to hear, was that many of the local pubs and bars have suffered – not just because the majority had added a premium to all drinks. (which in itself would certainly scare away a reasonable contingent of locals who would have liked to go out during Race Week, given how expensive local pubs now are). But because numbers had dropped so much for ‘race nights in Cheltenham’ that some bars had actually closed early on at least a couple of nights that week.

Why? Racegoers found it significantly cheaper to book premium accommodation as far away as Birmingham or Oxford, and even with the costs of travel between Cheltenham and their hotels added in each day, it meant that the costs were way cheaper, irrespective of any drinks premiums added in.

Historically, Cheltenham Races provided the helpful uplift that it did for the majority of businesses that benefitted, through the considerable increase in turnover or units sold, at prices that didn’t vary massively from any other week.

However, that has all changed.

Riding the back of the crisis that the hospitality trade is already experiencing – not only because of the response to Covid – but like so many other areas of the UKs business landscape, because of legislative changes that were overtly made as long as decades ago to ‘free markets’ and let ‘competition’ in, it is beyond regrettable that the panic over falling sales and rising costs may have encouraged the ‘let’s charge more because we can’ mentality that instead of helping in any meaningful way, could now be self-sabotaging the local trade by quickly amplifying the mess – not of their own making – that they are already in.

As I was growing up, stories abounded of the annual life ritual than many Irish Racegoers would undergo where they worked and saved all year so that they could blow the lot each year just as soon as Cheltenham came around.

Whether or not the detail is true, the picture this tale paints is a long way from fantasy and with people like a Postman I went to school with locally still going to the Festival every year and every day, you really do have to question just how expensive the whole experience is now becoming for those who have never seen Race Week as merely being just a day out, to really have become so very pissed off, that they are prepared to watch from a foreign bar; not go out drinking in Cheltenham into the early hours afterwards, or not bother attending at all.