Angela Rayner asked to investigate decision to deny High Wycombe its own town council

Angela Rayner has been asked to investigate Buckinghamshire Council’s decision to deny High Wycombe its own town council.

Khalil Ahmed, chair of the High Wycombe Town Council Campaign Steering Committee, wrote to the deputy prime minister and secretary of state for housing, communities and local government this week, urging her to review Buck’s Council’s decision.

He called the methods the unitary authority used to conclude that Wycombe’s governance should remain unchanged, ‘predetermined, biased and compromised’.

Ahmed’s requested call-in of the decision comes after Bucks councillors voted by 82 to 24 for a motion which said that the ‘unparished’ area of High Wycombe should not be turned into a parish and that the area was sufficiently governed by the existing town committee, trustees and community board.

The vote effectively brought an end years of wrangling by campaigners to create a town council in High Wycombe, which is one of the only places in Buckinghamshire not to be represented at parish level.

However, Ahmed, a former Wycombe mayor, who is one of the main campaigners for a town council, warned last month: “This is far from done yet.”

In his letter to Rayner this week, seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, he wrote: “We believe the process has been compromised. We urge you to personally investigate this decision and consider a call-in or review.

“It is our firm belief that the original findings of the community governance review have been overlooked in favour of a consultation that was structured to yield a predetermined outcome.”

Ahmed said that a petition led by him and other former mayors, Peter Cartwright and Trevor Snaith, had gathered enough signatures to meet the threshold of 7.5% of the electorate to trigger a ‘community governance review’ in 2019.

The review of Wycombe’s governance was launched by the former Wycombe District Council, before being closed by Buckinghamshire Council last year.

Ahmed said the original review’s findings were ‘unequivocal, demonstrating strong support for a town council’, but that there had been an ‘unacceptable delay’ by Bucks Council in carrying out the process.

A new review then commenced in January 2024, in which the people of Wycombe were asked if the town’s existing governance arrangements should remain unchanged or whether it should become a parish with its own town council.

A total of 2,532 people responded – 4.6 per cent of the electorate – with 60 per cent saying they wanted a town council, while 35 per cent were against.

Meanwhile, 43 per cent of respondents said they were prepared to pay for a new town council, with 46 per cent saying they were not.

Conservative councillors said these results showed that there was a lack of support for a town council and that residents did not want to pay for another layer of bureaucracy in their lives.

However, critics of Bucks Council’s vote against Wycombe getting its own council, argued that the results were statistically significant and that the consultation had actually attracted a far better turnout than most of Bucks Council’s county-wide consultations.

Ahmed wrote to Rayner: “Regrettably, this consultation was perceived by many as biased, as it not only inquired about support for a town council but also framed the question in the context of potential financial implications.”

The former mayor claimed that Wycombe’s lack of representation ‘undermines the democratic principles we value’.

Rayner’s officer has been approached for comment.