23 August 2002
Members judged responsible for their authority's failures could be stripped of decision-making powers and replaced by 'partnership boards' under government plans to deal with poorly performing councils.
Authorities classified as 'poor' when the results of the Comprehensive Performance Assessments are released in December could be run by a panel appointed directly by Whitehall.
A consultation paper on how to deal with failing authorities, put out by John Prescott's department, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, on August 20, makes it clear that members could be sidelined entirely while the authority's problems are turned around.
The boards would comprise people with operational experience of running services, such as other local authority chief executives, chief finance officers, business executives and community and voluntary representatives.
Councillors would be 'in a minority' on the board, and in some circumstances excluded altogether. But once a 'recovery' was achieved, control would be handed back to elected members.
Paul Kirby, director of inspection at the Audit Commission, told Public Finance that there was a wide spectrum of powers open to the partnership boards. They could take responsibility just for particular services within a council, such as education or social services, or take total control.
'They could be used to run a particular service, instead of it being run through a council committee. Or they could assume powers that have been taken off the council by the secretary of state and given to his appointed person,' he said.
In some instances partnership boards would be appointed in an advisory capacity and the council would still exercise formal powers. But Kirby was clear that they were specifically intended to address failures of political leadership.
Interim management boards, such as the one introduced in Walsall council to replace the chief executive and his team, will be used to tackle serious problems at senior officer level. Only two other councils, Hackney and Prescott's stamping ground of Kingston upon Hull, have faced central government intervention.
Matthew Warburton, head of futures at the Local Government Association, said partnership boards would be 'unelected and unaccountable' and called on ministers to clarify when they envisaged using such intervention.
'Will these proposals apply to all councils labelled "poor", or only to those in the category also judged to have low prospects for improvement?' he asked. 'We don't need a one-size-fits-all approach to this: any intervention needs to be flexible and sensitive.'
Councils facing a Whitehall takeover will first be asked to draw up their own action plan. Junior local government minister Chris Leslie said the department would support such authorities 'as far as possible'.
But he added: 'Where councils are resistant, we will have to make tough and, sometimes, unpopular decisions.'
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