Most people don’t spend much time thinking about how local government is organised. What they care about is whether the roads are fixed, the bins are collected, planning decisions make sense, and council tax stays affordable.

That’s exactly why the changes now underway in Surrey and Hampshire matter so much - because they will shape how those everyday services are delivered, and paid for, for many years to come.

In Surrey, change is coming quickly. Waverley is being folded into a new West Surrey authority, with elections taking place this May and the new council expected to be fully operational next year.

In Hampshire, county council elections are also going ahead, but wider reorganisation is further off. At present, East Hampshire is earmarked to join a new “Mid-North” authority at a later stage.

Councils are often invisible until something goes wrong. Yet they sit behind many of the services we rely on every day. That is why big, unresolved risks need to be dealt with before new authorities are created – not brushed aside and left for later.

In Surrey, there is one particularly serious question that still has no clear answer: debt. Woking Borough Council carries exceptional levels of unsecured debt, which even the Government accepts cannot be managed locally in full.

While £500 million of support has been promised, ministers have been clear this is only a first step. What worries me is the suggestion that any further support may depend on action taken “locally”, without clarity on whether that means Woking alone or the wider West Surrey authority. Residents in Waverley must not be left paying for liabilities they had no hand in creating.

This concern is all the sharper given the national picture on council tax. Labour promised restraint, yet the average Band D bill has already risen by around five percent in a single year.

Over the course of this Parliament, families across the country face a cumulative increase of more than £1,100. At the same time, Labour’s proposed “fair” funding reforms would penalise councils that have kept council tax below the national average.

Both Surrey and Hampshire have had millions cut from central funding after April. That creates a perverse incentive: prudent councils are punished, and taxpayers pay more regardless.

There is also confusion around devolution. In Hampshire, residents were told that reorganisation would come with a mayoral authority and access to devolved funding, only for those elections to be delayed until 2028. In Surrey, the prospect of a mayor appears to have been quietly dropped altogether, even as reorganisation presses ahead.

Taken together, this points to a worrying pattern. Structural change is being pushed through while fundamental questions remain unanswered. Before any new authority is formed, there must be clear answers on debt, devolution and accountability. I will continue pressing for firm guarantees that local residents are not left footing the bill for mistakes made elsewhere.