Swindon Borough Council has found itself on the outside of a devolution deal it quite fancied joining, after leaders in Oxfordshire and Berkshire said the town does not really fit into a proposed Thames Valley combined authority. The government wants to scrap district and borough councils in favour of larger regional bodies, many run by elected mayors, as part of a wider local government shake-up announced this year.
Swindon Borough Council leader Gary Sumner has argued the town should be included, calling it 'a vast economic powerhouse' that could help deliver housing and unlock infrastructure funding for the wider region. But Oxfordshire County Council leader Tim Bearder has said Swindon 'is not in the Thames Valley' and that folding it in would mean redrawing boundaries and complicating arrangements for police and fire services, which currently sit with Wiltshire. Sumner compared the rejection to not being invited to the party with the popular kids, while Wiltshire Council is instead pursuing a separate Wessex authority with Somerset, Dorset, and Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole.
It is understood that invitations to the Thames Valley gathering were drawn up some time ago, with Swindon's name added in pencil, then rubbed out, then possibly added again by someone from Oxford City Council, who has said it would be 'vital' for Swindon to join, before being rubbed out a second time by someone standing nearer the biscuits.
A council spokesperson confirmed that Swindon had not technically been excluded, it had simply not been unanimously included, which amounts to the same thing but with better minutes.
Brenda Pask, 72, of Old Town, who has lived there since before it was old, said she had heard the whole saga described on the radio as being like school playground politics. 'In my day,' she said, 'if you weren't wanted somewhere you were told to your face, not left stood by the bike sheds of Oxfordshire waiting for a decision. Ron wasn't invited to the Rotary Club for years and he just carried on mowing his lawn. Didn't need a mayor to tell him he mattered.'
Gary Tench, Area Manager at Tench Paper Solutions in Westlea, said the row had given him a fresh way of describing his own team's exclusion from the regional managers' away day. 'Pending further discussion, no hard feelings, that's basically my invite to the Thames Valley region meeting every single year,' he said. 'I've told Julie, if they don't want us at the table, we'll bring our own table. It's actually quite inspiring when you think about it. There might be a song in it.'
Meanwhile, speculation continues over whether Milton Keynes and Buckinghamshire will also be allowed to sit with the Thames Valley crowd, prompting some to wonder whether the whole process might be better run as a seating plan at a wedding, with Swindon placed somewhere near the toilets but assured it is not personal.
Sumner has said he hopes the Prime Minister will intervene to wave Swindon through, insisting this is the only thing that will get the deal across the line. Bearder maintains any agreement must be unanimous, and that he will only approve it when it feels right, which in council terms could mean anywhere between next spring and the heat death of the universe.
At time of writing, Swindon remains neither in the Thames Valley nor fully in Wessex, somewhere in a geographic no man's land previously occupied only by the Magic Roundabout and anyone trying to merge onto it at rush hour.