NOBODY will be convinced by Cllr Bob Price’s attempt to justify the recent shambles around devolution and council reorganisation in Oxfordshire.

Everybody went into this process acknowledging that the various regions of our county, however they were divided up, would benefit from having their services delivered by one council rather than two.

The bitterly disappointing result is that this prize quickly disappeared into squabbles about detail and process, between different bits of the Tory Party as well as between Tory and Labour.

It became a row not about how things are run but about who runs them.

Cllr Price tells us that consensus has “sadly not been possible”. That makes it sound like it was nobody’s fault.

There were things in both reports that could have formed the basis for a creative engagement with the emerging mood music from government. Instead, we have nothing.

The people of Oxford can see all too clearly how the current system is failing to deliver desperately-needed housing and transport infrastructure and fix our roads.

An opportunity to address that has been squandered.

Labour and Conservative politicians alike will be held accountable for this costly, embarrassing and timeconsuming failure.

ANDREW GANT

Liberal Democrat City Councillor for Summertown