In the 1957 film ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’ Alec Guiness played the role of Lt Col Nicholson a British army officer who stood up to his Japanese captors and for his defiance was locked in a tin box to suffer the tropical rigours of the Burmese jungle in intolerable sweltering  conditions. Now I’m not equating my visit to the National Association of Local Councils Conference in London to deliver a speech bigging up our town on the hottest day of the year to that. But it was quite warm.

And I’m glad I went because I received a warm welcome and can report back that Bridgwater is very well respected for the way we handled the changes in local government re-organisation and delegate after delegate from Rugeley to Rugby and from Eckerslike to Glottalstop (I hadn’t heard of some of these parishes) lined up to ask exactly what we did and how we did it.

But first a word of praise for the man at Bridgy ticket office. On a day where the trains were cancelled, re-routed or delayed he simply wrote me a note saying “Let ‘un on this’un” and I was up and back as if there wasn’t a ‘danger of death warm weather emergency’ at all.

NALC

NALC is the national equivalent of SALC. The ALC is association of local councils the S  is Somerset and the N is National. All the councils get together and compare notes. This was in the well air-conditioned America Square conference centre just by the Tower of London.

Most councils are either going through, have gone through or are threatened with ‘local government re-organisation’. The goal is cheaper councils, less staff, more savings. The result is too big councils, no staff to do the work and councils balancing on the precipice of financial collapse (see Somerset Councils minute book for the last 4 years).

In Somerset we mostly didn’t want that nor did we ask for it. But it came.

In Bridgwater we knew what we wanted and had known for 50 years. When we had a Borough council (as we had since 1468) people knew who ‘the Council’ was and who they could blame. Then Bridgwater lost all it’s power in 1974 to Sedgemoor District, which we saw as ‘Direct Rule from Cheddar’. We had control taken away from us and wanted it back.

TALC

In 2003 the last Labour government let us have a town council back but with very limited powers and still Sedgemoor was the ‘principal authority’.  We fought our corner, but we still didn’t control it.

The big change came when the last Government forced a Unitary council on us. We didn’t want it. It would be far too large and remote. But Sedgemoor would go and there would be a power vacuum, and we needed to step into it.

The key thing we did in 2023 was to make an early bid for the services we needed to control for the town. Parks and gardens, street cleaning, play areas, markets and events, fly tipping and to make sure we could keep our key assets going – the town hall, the art centre, the community centres in Hamp and Sydenham.

In a labour town like ours we knew protecting jobs and public services was the key. Both the last government and the current one identified large sums of money to help us out – the Town Deal from the Tories and the Pride in Place from Labour. Those services and projects had to be delivered locally. We made a personnel grab on Sedgemoor as it closed down and on Somerset as it dismissed swathes of workers. Our staff jumped from 3 to 70 and with a wider service portfolio, a larger operational role and a more direct influence over the quality, appearance and management of the town we struck at exactly the right time. It’s not us that are in any kind of financial trouble. We’re fighting fit and ready for action.

Big Malc

The message I took to Conference was one extolling the value of local people managing local services and of a council not being afraid to do what it thinks is best for our town and at exactly the right time.

That’s what other councils around the country think of Bridgwater. We’re a town of ‘firsts’ and will never accept being  ‘second’ to anyone.