I WAS appalled to hear Leighton Andrews’ announcement yesterday that he is cutting the 22 Local Authorities in Wales to 8 or 9.Under these proposals P C Cis to amalgamate with Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion, which will effectively take us back to the old Dyfed days. It never worked then so why would it work now ?

Hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of tax payers’ money was wasted on the previous amalgamation and Pembrokeshire always lost out being the poorer recipient in the west.

My late husband and Cllr.

Peter Stock fought tooth and nail to have Pembrokeshire returned as a Unitary Authority and with others succeeded to achieve this in 1996. During this period of austerity, because of the prudence of the current authority we have made sure that the most vulnerable of our constituents are catered for first, and up to the present time we have achieved this without forced redundancies.

This has not been the case with other authorities, whose Council Charges are much greater than ours and with whom the Welsh Government are expecting us to amalgamate, which will inevitably result in higher council tax charges for the people of Pembrokeshire.

During such difficult times we can ill afford to fund this costly reorganisation, when the Welsh Government fails to illustrate where the money is coming from. I believe they expect to raise the money from the reserves of each authority all of whom are struggling from the massive cuts already in the pipe-line.

Local authorities are already working closely together to provide more efficient services as economically as possible, and it does not need such drastic reorganisation to do this which will cost the tax payer dearly.

It is estimated that reorganisation will cost between £165 million and £200 million pounds. Would it not be better for authorities to continue to work together to improve services and use such an amount to achieve this and not waste money to reorganise local government merely for political reasons and not for the good of the people of Pembrokeshire and Wales as a whole?

As indicated earlier if the amalgamation comes into force there will be dramatic cut backs in staffing and services in all three Counties.

There will be no direct local services. All decisions will be made in Carmarthen. Our Community Charge will be greatly increased to keep in line with Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion. The situation will be horrendous for Pembrokeshire. It absolutely disgusts me. We must not let this happen. We must not vote for those Candidates for the Welsh Assembly elections next year who are supporting this ill-conceived idea. They will ruin Pembrokeshire as they are currently ruining our hospital services and demoralising our hardworking doctors and nurses.

Umelda Havard

County Member for Merlin’s Bridge