Oxford City Council leader BOB PRICE on why he thinks a single unitary council is the wrong approach for Oxfordshire.

For the people of Oxford, a unitary county council would be a disaster.

Harmonisation of services across the county would rip up the city’s approach to key services like housing and homelessness, climate change, advice services, recycling and recreation and the arts.

The needs of a multi-ethnic and socially-mixed urban community are very different to the more rural parts of the county.

The city is also a focus for the economic vitality of the county, the region and the UK as a whole and there is a delicate balance between its economic, social, cultural and academic sectors that needs careful management.

The county council’s proposals fail to address these needs.

The majority of our MPs and the city and district leaders in Oxfordshire oppose these proposals.

A county unitary authority would be the third largest in the country, and could not adequately manage growth and sustainable development across the diverse communities of Oxfordshire.

The county’s proposed savings do not take account of the costs of delivering the new structures.

And the savings are modest when compared to the scale of the funding challenge for social services.

PwC identified in their report that far greater savings could be secured through service transformation.

The track record of all the district councils in delivering cost savings and innovative approaches to service improvement is excellent and we should build on that.

The creation of a single unitary council for the whole of Oxfordshire would be highly disruptive for local services and will take years to create.

The proposals present a threat to local communities’ ability to influence development in their area through a remote planning process that could impose new homes on communities against the wishes of locally elected councillors and communities.

The requirement to equalise council tax across the county would mean big increases for many residents.

The county says it will ask for varied council tax levels across the unitary to avoid that but such proposals have never been allowed anywhere in the country.

We strongly believe this is the time to concentrate on delivering Oxfordshire’s potential contribution to the national economy.

Endless debates about disputed approaches to local authority structures, such as the county council’s ‘One Oxfordshire’ proposal, are a time-wasting distraction.

The Oxfordshire’s Local Enterprise Partnership (OxLEP) board, at its December 2016 meeting, agreed with the support of all six councils to develop last year’s devolution proposals to include new governance arrangements with a combined authority and an elected mayor.

We are already exploiting the potential of the unique knowledge economy that has developed around the University of Oxford – currently ranked number one in the world – but much more is in prospect.

Oxfordshire is one of the country’s principal resources for high-quality, knowledge based growth.

The challenge facing us – and government – is how we can work together to manage the results of our success and tackle the big constraints that we are facing – a congested transport network, housing demand massively outstripping supply, and skills shortages in key areas of technical and scientific work.

It is crucial that we tackle these challenges in partnership with Government to make the most of the potential of the leading economic zones in the county and ensure that the National Infrastructure Commission’s work on the Cambridge-Milton Keynes-Oxford corridor complements Oxfordshire’s drive for economic growth and environmental sustainability.

Our collective aspiration is to bring in some £2bn of investment in infrastructure to the local economy, to protect the environment and quality of life within the context of a dynamic modern economy.

This is the moment to embrace the mayoral combined authority approach, bringing together business, research and academic institutions and local government to focus on the real enablers of growth, in transport, housing and skills.

We will be submitting our proposals soon and showing how Oxfordshire can best realise the opportunities that lie ahead.

This comment piece is part of a series about proposals for an Oxfordshire 'super council.