Like many of us, I did try to use the Christmas period to switch off and recharge my batteries. It wasn’t easy, as I liked working and being busy, however a little break was much needed after a very exciting and challenging year.
On the last day of the year, my phone rang. Someone, who I met a number of years ago, called to ask for a bit of advice. It was a longer conversation about the school admissions, additional support for a disabled child and a housing issue. Who is responsible for schooling? Whose responsibility is it to maintain our housing stock? What about roads or planning? What is the difference between the role of a Local or a County Councillor?
Although I find the subject truly fascinating, at times, it is not easy to explain the functions of the Local Government. This might be particularly tricky if you live in a two-tier Local Authorities structure like me in Welwyn Hatfield and Hertfordshire. During our campaigns or regular canvasing sessions, most residents don’t mind (or maybe they don’t care?) who delivers their services, as long as the provision to support our key priorities is efficient, good and the standard is high across all areas.
Most readers will be aware that the government has published, in the second half of December 2024, a white paper on possible reforms of Local Governments. Hertfordshire might be one of a few counties, which will have to transition from currently 10 Districts Council to one or two. There are a number of possible outcomes of the consultation, many more questions and a huge amount of uncertainty.
Since 2013 there have been at least two sets of proposals for reorganisation and neither made any headway in Hertfordshire. Maybe this time will be different, but until it happens watch this space. So much to sort out, how is the Council housing organised? Who decides on planning applications? What are the impacts on transport and highways? Will a ‘unitary council’ and a ‘strategic mayoral authority’ be better or worse than a Borough Council and a County Council? Will the Council staff become demotivated, knowing that their jobs might be made redundant? Will the actual “democratic cost” of creating one Local Authority be reduced, when (which is very likely) some decisions will have to be disseminated to Parish Councils?
As expected, the reaction from all the Leaders of District Councils wasn’t favourable. All of them rejected the government proposals to create one unitary council for Hertfordshire. I agree that in order to achieve best outcomes for residents, local businesses and key stakeholders, we would need to give ourselves more time to implement the government proposal. The timing in all of this is critical; the fast track timeline suggests that the new unitary council would be established and operational by April 2027 and the normal track would set up the new “Hertfordshire super-Council” by April 2028. By contrast, much needed reform of the local Government in Poland, after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, started in 1990 and ended (with a short break in between) in 1999. The transformation has had a major impact on the way in which the County and District Council were run. The number of County Councillors was reduced from 49 to 16.
In my opinion, none of this should be driven by a political calculation. Any of these major decisions should be guided by our desire to improve efficiency and enhance our decision making. Moreover, any significant changes should empower our residents and their ability to take an active part in shaping local services and policies.
I am certain that this topic won’t go away and we will be coming back to it a lot in the near future. Let’s just hope that politicians at all levels will ensure that it is our communities and neighbourhoods that need to benefit from this transition.
* Michal Siewniak is a Lib Dem activist and councillor for Handside ward, Welwyn Hatfield.
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10 Comments
Devolution, by definition, is supposed to be about transferring power down the way. The idea of abolishing lower level councils and moving their powers up to a single larger council is the exact opposite of devolution.
Berkshire County Council was abolished in the late 1990s with its responsibilities transferred to the districts.
This seems to have worked fairly well, if we are going to have unitaries then base them on districts not counties.
I don’t perceive the current Labour Government making these changes for political reasons.
In my view two-tier local government is inevitably inefficient, and needs to be made one-tier. Furthermore each local government unit needs to cover a sufficiently large number of people to avoid the dis-economies of smallness.
Hence I fundamentally disagree with David Warren’s idea of having unitaries based on districts.
@Mohammed Aim
It works well in Berkshire.
@ Mohammed Amin,
There speaks one who apparently doesn’t live in a rural community. Out here in Suffolk, beyond the county town, we have a third tier of local government, the Town and Parish Council sector, representing our communities, providing services which the other tiers can’t, or won’t, supply.
I was once quite relaxed about unitary authorities, but looking at the increasingly parlous finances of the counties, I can see only too clearly what will happen here. The rather better financed District Councils, currently supplying non-statutory services that residents rather appreciate, will be subsumed into larger authorities who will, without extra funding, move that budget into hard-pressed mandatory provision. The savings will delay the inevitable, not remedy the decline of local government.
And, whilst Town Councils, and larger Parish Councils, may be able to take up some of the slack, the impoverishment of our communal life will continue, especially in less well-off areas.
@Mohammed Amin – “In my view two-tier local government is inevitably inefficient, and needs to be made one-tier.”
It might surprise you, but democracy is inherently inefficient, from your previous posts on local government, unitary authorities and elected mayors, I get the distinct impression you don’t actually like democracy and the need for debate and consensus building.
The cracks are already showing in the two new unitary authorities (each presiding “over a sufficiently large number of people to avoid the dis-economies of smallness.”) in Northamptonshire…
A unitary authority has worked for Milton Keynes but I don’t know if it is going as well in the new Buckinghamshire Council, I can’t imagine people in Buckingham taking kindly to being dominated by Aylesbury and High Wycombe.
Michal,
I am afraid you are going to be sadly disappointed if you really do expect that your concluding sentence “Let’s just hope that politicians at all levels will ensure that it is our communities and neighbourhoods that need to benefit from this transition” will prove to be anything more than becoming a sad example of whistling in the wind.
The simple fact is that every major or mini-reorganisation of Local government over the fifty years has solely been done for the benefit of the ruling party in Westminster. As I have posted before
We all know that as usual Labour’s sole aim is electoral advantage for the Labour party.
They want to force through
1) An elected dictator (sorry Mayor) – a Labour party hack, but the odd Con will be tolerated,
2) huge councils,
3) with vast wards and
4) less councillors to serve local people.
Oh yes and
5) Have no elections in 2025 because
a) Labour are doing badly and will lose
b) the Cons are doing badly and will lose and
c) those pesky irritating Lib Dems will be on an up with their new MPs so less elections will be just fine for the time being.
I was a Liberal and Liberal Democat Councillor in Bristol for 12 years, so saw several structural changes, none of which really benefitted local people. In my first term in the 1980s Bristol City Council had District powers, and Avon was the County Council. In the mid 1990s four Unitary authorities replaced ithe County and Dictricts
On one level this was good, in theory it brought decision making closer to people. But the Unitaries were too small to deal with regional strategic issues like transport and sub-regional planning, so an attempt was mde to reinvent the wheel in the form of a West of England Partnership of the four Unitaries.
On a low turnout in 2012 residents in the city of Bristol voted narrowly on a low turnout to move to an Elected Mayor system. Both the Mayors we had became a sort of elected Dictator, and made the Council even more remote from the people. Another referendum abolished the post, and Bristol has now gone back to the Committee system it had in my first term.
Structural changes have NOT changed the perception of a democratic deficit between Councils and voters. And cuts to Council funding from central Government have hollowed out local services and the scope for discretion on how money is spent.
Top down imposed structures and reducing the number of elected representatives do not improve local services or make people feel represented better.
And David Evans is spot on about the partisan politics underpinning this.
“Top down imposed structures and reducing the number of elected representatives do not improve local services or make people feel represented better.
And David Evans is spot on about the partisan politics underpinning this.”
Agree