{"id":684237,"date":"2026-01-09T10:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T10:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/684237\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T10:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T10:14:10","slug":"what-is-next-for-councils-and-elections-in-surrey-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/684237\/","title":{"rendered":"What is next for councils and elections in Surrey in 2026?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the concerns that has come up is that the new East and West Surrey councils will be more remote and will not feel as local to people.<\/p>\n

A solution being put forward, including by SCC, is to create Neighbourhood Area Committees (NACs). <\/p>\n

These would be advisory bodies set up in different areas and aims would include discussing key local issues and agreeing priorities for towns and villages.<\/p>\n

There are four pilot NACs – in Dorking and the surrounding villages, East Elmbridge, Farnham and North Tandridge – which are going on until March.<\/p>\n

Not everyone is convinced \u2013 the former chairman of the District Councils’ Network described them as “insufficient and inferior, external<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, borough councils like Epsom and Ewell, Guildford and Woking are considering setting up new parish areas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Parish and town councils have elected councillors and are able to raise money through council tax and other means to run services such as allotments, parks and public toilets.<\/p>\n

Again it is not a universally popular idea.<\/p>\n

For example, opposition councillors in Epsom and Ewell have warned they could increase household bills, duplicate services and create confusion, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the concerns that has come up is that the new East and West Surrey councils will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-684237","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115864617889207988","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}