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After months of uncertainty and bitter in-fighting, after acres of news coverage and extensive public consultation, surely we are clear now about the future of unitary councils in
England?

Are we hell!

The Government announced yesterday that “nine new unitary councils would be set up by May 2009”.

Well, it wrote to several councils to say that Secretary of State Blears was “minded” to approve a number of unitary bids.  Minded! To say this is a weasel word is frankly insulting to weasels.

Then it told some of the so-called successful bidders that whilst they had passed the test, they had sort of failed it too and would have to re-sit part of the exam again before Blears the Biker could actually give a final green light.

In another area, part of a county was given unitary status with no plans in place for the rest of that county, and with the “losers” invited to fight over the spoils.

Norwich City’s bid was rejected but it was told there was a case for a unitary Norwich of some kind but on different boundaries -  and the Boundary Commission will be asked to think this through.

Meanwhile, there are rumours that in at least one case, the civil servants recommended a completely different decision from the one the politicians announced.

Even dogs have better dinners than this mess.  “Bizarre” is one of the epithets that has hit the blogs and emails already.

It is as if ministers had sat down and worked through all the reasonable options and then over late night whiskies joked about how they could really mess it up.  The trouble is civil servants must have noted down the jokes and ignored the real decisions.

Politicians are often accused of having a larf.  In this case they actually are.

paul.masterman@blueyonder.co.uk