30 June 2006
A leading local authority chief executive has attacked Scotland's three-tier governance system as illogical and incoherent.
Keith Yates, Scottish chair of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers, said Scotland was too small to sustain three tiers – the Scottish Executive, regional bodies (such as water, transport and housing organisations) and local authorities.
He argued that local governance arrangements in Scotland were cumbersome and that too many ad hoc decisions had been taken since devolution. These had fundamentally changed the governance of public services.
'Setting up one new organisation after another with a different set of remits, often overlapping and not joining up hasn't necessarily been good,' he told a CIPFA seminar in Edinburgh on June 23.
Yates, who is also chief executive of Stirling Council, added: 'The growth of single-issue public service organisations, inspectorates and ring-fenced budgets has constrained innovation and initiative.'
He maintained that the current system of local governance in Scotland had come about by default rather than by design, and that it sat uneasily with the Executive's ambition to have excellent public services.
'I would say that the local governance map of Scotland defies logic, coherence and it often impedes delivery,' he said.
Yates said the Solace view was that: 'We would not start from here and do not believe that 32 councils, 23 local enterprise companies, 14 health boards and eight police and fire boards are the right answer.'
Scotland, with 5 million people, was too small, and its 'connectivity' – the ability of its leaders to communicate closely – was too strong to sustain three tiers of governance, he stressed.
Questioning the need for a sub-regional solution, Yates said single-tier governance would cut out many of the difficulties, complexities and problems currently being experienced.
He suggested there might be a case for considering whether a local service such as fire should be run nationally or hospitals managed nationally rather than by health boards.
The CIPFA Scotland seminar, which was attended by leading public sector officials, was held to consider how reform of the public sector is being driven forward.
PFjun2006
