More tiers before bedtime

8 Jun 07
PETER HETHERINGTON | I’ve been fascinated by local government ever since I inherited from my dad a commemorative brochure to mark the opening of the new municipal power station.

I’ve been fascinated by local government ever since I inherited from my dad a commemorative brochure to mark the opening of the new municipal power station.

He was a senior official in one of the old county boroughs, starting work in the treasurer’s department when ‘corporations’ as they were known, supplied energy and water, ran trams and buses, supervised health, and sometimes provided banking. They were the public sector. They civilised Britain before a national government developed a social agenda.

Today, I contrast this with the reality on the ground in my patch. Local government, in two-tier areas like mine, is a distant memory. Bluntly, I am not governed locally.

True, the district council collects my main refuse bin every other week, sweeps the streets and subsidises the local gym. But the county, supposedly the strategic authority, has disappeared. Roads and pavements are potholed and cracked. The drains, invariably blocked, are supposed to be cleaned annually. There is little attempt to connect with local communities.

But on the county council website you enter a parallel universe: the authority seems to think it is doing such a good job that it wants more power. It is one of 16 in England bidding for unitary status. It claims, extravagantly, that the government is ‘working through a proposal which would save £17m a year to put back into improving services and giving people more say about what happens in their area’. Dream on.

In the tortured history of local government reorganisation, the attempt by Communities and Local Government Secretary Ruth Kelly to provide a brief ‘window of opportunity’ for a limited number of unitary bids is proving to be so counter-productive — with open warfare between competing counties and districts — that arguments for it to be scrapped are growing.

Now we know that the Treasury, unimpressed by claims of substantial economies from councils, is concerned about the financial implications. In a letter leaked last week, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Stephen Timms noted that Kelly had already acknowledged that the costs involved ‘are subject to uncertainty that they may overrun, or savings be realised more slowly than envisaged’. He added: ‘In the current fiscal climate, these are risks that we simply cannot afford to bear.’

Twenty-six councils, counties and districts applied for unitary status. Timms complained that allowing 16 to go out to consultation would raise undue expectations, especially as some — counties versus districts — have clashed.

But Kelly pressed ahead. To complicate matters, some authorities are now taking legal action. Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council, which is resisting Shropshire’s plans to become a unitary authority, has applied for a judicial review of Kelly’s consultation process, arguing that the minister has been ‘unfair, partial and unbalanced’. Congleton Borough Council in Cheshire is following suit.

It is all getting to be such a distraction in local government that Gordon Brown would be wise to call a halt to the whole process when he becomes prime minister. Who knows, he might even change the regime at the top of the relevant department?

The new prime minister, or his new communities minister, should consider a different tack. Undeniably, governance in the 34 two-tier areas needs an overhaul. People are unclear about the division of responsibilities between authorities, and so have lost faith in the system. Resources are often wasted, staff duplicated, back-office functions rarely shared.

The answer? Make clear immediately, after halting this plan for reorganisation, that there must be change. Counties and the 238 districts should be set a deadline to establish joint offices, or ‘one-stop-shop’ information centres, that will provide a single point of contact for consumers and council taxpayers. For a start, smaller districts should begin merging back-office functions with a new director of resources at county level to supervise the process across county councils and districts. (Sensible authorities are already moving in this direction.)

The Audit Commission should then be told to review its procedures, and terms of reference, to inspect the delivery of services in the round, across counties and districts, from a consumer perspective. The old Comprehensive Performance Assessment regime, geared to examining the corporate structure in individual councils, has dismally failed.

The Commission’s new Comprehensive Area Assessment, due to begin in 2009, is meant to be ‘more relevant to local people by focusing on issues important to the community’ across local authority boundaries. But that’s two years away.

Out in the sticks, some of us want action and not meaningless rhetoric like ‘choice and voice’ or ‘community empowerment’. We want the decent services that many urban areas now take for granted.

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