Over the rest of summer and the autumn, I’ll be doing a series on local government (a revisit to a topic covered on the old Oggy Bloggy Ogwr in 2013) – both in a devolved context and in the context of an independent Wales.
To kick things off, here’s how local government has developed and evolved in Wales.
By the 1990s, central government and some public bodies had fallen out of love with the idea of two-tier local government.
In 1991, the then (Conservative) Secretary of State for Wales, David Hunt, announced another local government review in Wales. The key policy was the creation of unitary authorities – where local government functions would be carried out by a single council in a given area, instead of being split between a county and a district; so “single-tier authorities”.
Some of the justifications for the reforms included a means to properly reflect “traditional local loyalties” (which didn’t fit the two-tier system), reducing duplication of functions and ending frictions between county and district councils. The aim was to create a system of local government that was “closer to the communities it serves”2.
The situation at the time was that the Secretary of State for Wales was very powerful – the equivalent of a colonial Governor then, compared to the non-job it is today – and various executive agencies and bodies (known as Quangos) held great influence over policy in Wales; most notably the Welsh Development Agency (WDA). Although, in principle, the reforms would decentralise Wales they only went part of the way.
The original proposal was for 21 unitary authorities, which changed to 23 and later settled on 22. The proposals also cut the number of fire and rescue services from 8 to 3.
Shadow authorities were elected in 1994 to oversee the switch to the 22 new unitary authorities in 1996 and this is how local government in Wales has remained to this day.
2. Wales Office (March 1993). “A Charter for the Future” (p 2-3). Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/271965/2155.pdf
