Elected mayors ‘have not improved council services or accountability’

15 Jun 09
The elected mayor system is unpopular and does not lead to improvements in public services, a leading academic told MPs at an inquiry into local government accountability.

By David Williams

The elected mayor system is unpopular and does not lead to improvements in public services, a leading academic told MPs at an inquiry into local government accountability.

Speaking at the first hearing of the Committee on Standards in Public Life inquiry, Steve Leach, professor of local government at De Montfort University in Leicester, criticised the reforms introduced by the 2000 Local Government Act.

‘Mayors are more visible,’ he said. ‘But there is no evidence that mayoral systems are more effective in terms of delivering performance improvement as assessed by Comprehensive Performance Assessments.

‘What’s so great about strong leadership? You want effective leadership that actually delivers in terms of CPA scores.’

Leach said that while the mayoral system centralised power to stronger and more visible leaders, it also speeded up the decision-making process without ensuring better decisions were made.

Elected mayors had also failed to capture the public’s imagination and proved unpopular with councillors, who preferred leaders to be directly accountable to their party groups.

Another change brought in by the Act was the Cabinet system. This had reduced transparency, Leach argued, as decisions were typically taken in private and rubber-stamped at ill-attended public meetings with little debate.

The overview and scrutiny system, which replaced council committees, was also ‘mediocre in terms of accountability’. The scrutiny committees were hampered by the requirement for local authority staff to serve both executive and opposition councillors equally, he said.

In reality, the committees suffered because senior officers became more loyal to the executive as they regularly collaborated with leading councillors in developing policy. One solution would be to install a dedicated scrutiny officer in each authority.

The committee also heard evidence from Paul Rowsell, deputy director for local government at the Department for Communities and Local Government. One of the architects of the 2000 Act, he also acknowledged there were weaknesses in the overview and scrutiny system.

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