Tuesday, July 08, 2014
The unanswered questions around local government reorganisation in Wales
This is my article on local government reorganisation published yesterday on the Institute of Welsh Affairs website
The Welsh Government is on a mission: they have commited themselves to reshuffling the local council pack as painlessly as possible and they want to enlist our support to do it.
They are doing so without any further devolution of power to those new super-councils and without changing the basis on which they are elected. Form and structure are taking precedence over accountability, transparency, and effectiveness.
If the outcome of elections does reflect the way people voted then the opposite is true. Councils are more representative, scrutiny is more effective and there is much greater accountability and transparency. As a result services are better.
The Welsh Government will publish its own estimate in due course. But what is important here is how long it will take to recover the cost through savings, if there are substantial savings.
The Welsh Government is on a mission: they have commited themselves to reshuffling the local council pack as painlessly as possible and they want to enlist our support to do it.
Their
determination to implement the Williams Commission report will come to a head
on Tuesday when they announce their response to it but that will just be the
start of the story.
Welsh
Ministers have saddled themselves with a handicap. The commission they established
to look at this did not have the support or involvement of the other political parties. Attempts at
forming a consensus, or even a majority for a particular set of proposals
therefore become more difficult.
It
is not the job of opposition parties to dig the Welsh government out of a hole
of their own making. Local councillors, who stand to lose out through any
reorganisation, are not likely to be inclined to step into that breach either.
But
this should not be about the politicians, at whatever level. This issue is
about the effective delivery of services and how the councillors and officers
charged with that task can be held accountable for it.
What we need above all else is lasting and
fundamental reform. We have had two local government reorganisations in just
over 40 years. My concern is that the basis on which the current reorganisation
is being proposed will leave us having to do it all over again within the next
decade or so.
That is because, instead of creating councils based on sustainable
communities, the Welsh Government are seeking to shoehorn existing councils
together into bigger versions of themselves.
They are doing so without any further devolution of power to those new super-councils and without changing the basis on which they are elected. Form and structure are taking precedence over accountability, transparency, and effectiveness.
The Williams Commission was charged with looking
at public services in Wales but were told to leave health alone. Given that it
is widely recognised that in terms of the use of public resources that there
remains a dysfunctional relationship between health and social care, the
decision not to examine this issue and find suitable solutions to it is
perverse.
The opportunity to democratise local health
provision was consequently missed or deliberately overlooked.
For Welsh Liberal Democrats the issue of fair
voting is a central consideration in any reorganisation. Our view is that fair
voting is absolutely fundamental to ensuring that you have accountable and
transparent local authorities.
If the outcome of elections do not reflect the
way people voted and produce big majorities for single parties on a minority of
votes then not only are those councils unrepresentative, but they are less accountable,
less sensitive to local opinion, and scrutiny is consequently less effective.
The outcome is poorer services.
If the outcome of elections does reflect the way people voted then the opposite is true. Councils are more representative, scrutiny is more effective and there is much greater accountability and transparency. As a result services are better.
Cost is of course fundamental to any
reorganisation. The Williams Commission estimates that it will cost about £100m
to bring about the series of mergers they propose. The Welsh Local Government
Association says that you can double that figure.
The Welsh Government will publish its own estimate in due course. But what is important here is how long it will take to recover the cost through savings, if there are substantial savings.
In a time of austerity every penny counts if we
are to preserve services. A big up-front outlay of cash, which cannot be
recovered fairly quickly will make things worse.
And what about the cost to taxpayers, who have
already seen their council tax bills soar? The Williams Commission report
contains some good news and some bad news for ordinary families.
They say that in the event of straightforward
mergers, there will need to be an equalisation of council tax bills across the
new local authority area. That means that without an extra penny being spent
and before the new councils set their budgets, many families will find
themselves paying more, whilst others will be better off.
Thus in terms of the proposed merger of Bridgend
and Neath Port Talbot, council tax payers in the latter council will pay 4.4%
less, whiilst Bridgend familes will face a 4.8% increase.
Council taxpayers in Anglesey will face a 6.9%
hike as the price of becoming part of a new Gwynedd Council; Conwy taxpayers
will pay 6.1% more; in Pembrokeshire council tax bills will soar by 9%; Newport
by 6.5%; whilst the price for residents of Caerphilly of a merger with Blaenau
Gwent will be 10.1% extra on their bills.
Will there be a dampening mechanism to protect
taxpayers? If so how long will it last? How will it be paid for? Will the cost
of that mechanism be top-sliced from existing council budgets or will the Welsh
Government find new money to pay for it?
There are many many more questions to be
answered. The Local Government Minister made a statement to the Welsh Local
Government Association conference a few weeks ago in which she said that the
council elections in 2017 will go-ahead on the current boundaries.
However she also promised incentives for those
councils that wanted to voluntarily merge. Their councillors will have an extra
year in office, a six year term before facing the electorate on new ward
boundaries in 2018. The catch is that there will be less of them, so some will
see their career in local government come to an end without a ballot being
cast.
Furthernore it is intended to realign the local
council elections across Wales so despite volunteer councillors having a longer
term in office up to 2018, this will be balanced by a subsequent shorter term.
Some incentive.
We are still waiting for details of when the
newly merged councils will face their first elections on new boundaries,
whether councillors will serve for a four or five year term, how many
councillors will serve on each of the new authorities, whether there will be
shadow councils, and whether the intention is to keep local government
elections and Welsh Assembly elections separate.
From the point of view of services, the
fundamental question is how the Welsh Government intend to address the very
complex formula that is currently used to distribute funds to councils. That has the potential to add significant
complexity to the whole process of mergers.
Finally, what about community councils? There are over 700 of these bodies, some
substantial in size and budget, delivering local services, others representing
a few hundred people. In my view there needs to be some rationalisation of
these bodies so that if they wish and if it is desirable, they can pick up the
slack created by the much bigger county councils and take on local service
delivery at community level.
When the First Minister makes his statement on
Tuesday, he will do so knowing that these and many more questions will remain
unanswered for some time to come. If we are to resolve them however, then he
needs to adopt a far more consensual approach and work more closely with
others.
There is political agreement that there are too
many councils and that something needs to be done about it. It is at that point
that consensus breaks down. Compromise is possible but only if the Welsh
Government is prepared to make concessions and to listen to others. This week
will be the first test as to how far they are willing to go in bringing others
with them on this agenda.
