LOCAL councils in Wales are facing tough times.

Savage cuts to their budgets have seen reductions in services across the board and there is more of the same to come.

Libraries have closed, swimming pools have been farmed out to charitable trusts, community events have been scaled down.

And yet much time and money has also been wasted as the Welsh Government has flailed around attempting to come up with some local government reforms.

The much-vaunted Williams Commission report is now condemned to a future of gathering dust on a minister’s shelf, voluntary merger proposals from some councils have been kicked into the long grass, and now Leighton Andrews has come up with his own plan for the future of local councils.

In fact, what has happened this week was pretty much what was predicted in this column back in January.

The Williams’ proposals may have been based on the flawed logic of merging councils based on their access to European grant money, but at least there was some logic involved.

Mr Andrews’ grand plan appears to be based on nothing at all, other than having fewer, bigger councils by bashing together those that already exist.

So if Labour wins next year’s Assembly elections we will see the return of a Gwent local authority.

But those people who think this means a simple return to the pre-1996 days of local government should think again.

This proposed new Gwent council would be enormous, merging the current Newport, Torfaen, Monmouthshire, Blaenau Gwent and Caerphilly councils into one huge behemoth that would attempt to serve a population of more than 600,000 people.

This is no return to the days of Gwent county council.

The old Gwent authority dealt with the big ticket issues in local government like education, social services and highways.

Beneath it was a set of borough councils that did the more local stuff like bin collections and street cleaning.

How on earth could there be any local accountability with a council as large as that being proposed by Mr Andrews?

How could it possibly serve an area so diverse that it would include both the richest and poorest areas of Wales, with huge variations in council tax levels?

Some of the councils that would merge operate their own housing stock, others have ceded theirs to housing associations.

How would that work?

Where would the administrative centre of such an authority be based?

Newport is the obvious answer because of its size and infrastructure but councils like Caerphilly and Monmouthshire have spent millions in recent years on new offices.

Taking council staff out of a town like Pontypool would deal its economy a blow from which it would take years to recover.

It makes no sense.

I have said before in this column that local government reform should be radical and based purely on the needs of the people councils serve, not just on rearranging what is already in place.

I have long advocated three councils for Gwent – one covering the M4 corridor, one the former heavy industry Valleys towns, and one the rural areas.

Just bashing together existing councils – whether that is done the Williams way or the Andrews way – is mere window-dressing.

There are too many councils in Wales and there are too many councillors, too many of whom are little more than time-serving nodding donkeys.

The Welsh Government has the chance to carry out real reforms of local government – but it must be done via cross-party consensus and with the principles of localism at its heart.

So much time and money has been spent on this over the last few years, and yet we are left with a set of proposals with which few appear to agree.

This is a chance wasted.