The cost of Local Area Committees will be almost £1.5M this year. Most areas already have parish/town councils to deal with the truly local matters. To most people, Eastleigh’s LAC’s are just planning committees.

The majority of planning applications are dealt with by planning officers. Conservatives say that the remaining large and contentious applications often affect wide areas of the borough and should not be decided by just a handful of councillors at a hyper-local level. Conservatives would abolish the LAC’s and set up proper planning committees, like most other councils, so that all councillors can have a say on planning applications which affect the residents they’re elected to represent.