In just a few weeks’ time Hampshire voters will go to the polls in important County Council elections.

Who manages and delivers services for us locally really matters.

But there’s a big change coming in the shape of the government’s ‘reorganisation’ of Hampshire’s local authorities. As you will have read in the Herald and Post, 15 councils will be replaced by five new ‘unitary’ councils.

East Hampshire district will be split. Most of the area, including Alton and Petersfield, will become part of a vast new ‘Mid Hampshire’ council.

But the southern parishes of Clanfield, Rowlands Castle and Horndean are instead to be allocated to ‘South East Hampshire’ along with Portsmouth, Havant, Gosport and Fareham.

Whenever this reorganisation plan comes up, I hear one question from residents again and again: “Why?”

Actually, there’s two. Why has the government come up with this particular geographical carve-up? And why are they doing it at all?

After all, it didn’t make it into the Labour manifesto, and it is not something local people were asking for.

The main arguments from ministers are mostly about clarity (that in future no one will be confused about which tier of local government does what), and cost.

Many people suspect there is another driver, too: to even further shift housing targets into rural areas.

The cost argument is not totally baseless. By moving some things from a district council level to a bigger area, you should be able to make some cost savings – so-called ‘economies of scale’.

But there will be cost increases, too – because some things that were done at the county level will now be done at smaller scale than before.

So the potential for net savings is about how big the unitary council areas are. Ministers had set a minimum population of 500,000, but in the plan they are now implementing that has been watered down.

The ministers who initiated this project, Angela Rayner and Jim McMahon, are no longer in post. But the project goes on, even despite it no longer meeting its own stated logic.

Moreover, savings – even if they do materialise – would not come for some time, whereas the big costs of the reorganisation itself will come a lot sooner.

Then there is the important question of identity.

Many residents in the southern parishes of the district feel more affinity with East Hampshire than with Portsmouth. Elsewhere in East Hants residents face being part of a huge area with less in common than the existing district.

This is a plan that will break up our area, cause disruption and incur a lot of cost, all to pursue cost savings that are – at best – uncertain and years away.

The question “Why?” does not have an obvious answer.