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.
Responsibility for local government was devolved to Wales from the beginning of devolution. However, the Senedd was largely a funding body and lacked law-making powers. So despite the devolution of local government, the most significant law reforming local government post-devolution actually came from the UK Parliament.
The Local Government Act 2000 created the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales to act as a watchdog, as well as an Adjudication Panel of Wales to act as a tribunal to hear cases involving misconduct by elected councillors (Part II).
The 2000 Act also changed the executive arrangements for the 22 unitary authorities.
The executive committee system was replaced by a separate Leader and Cabinet to act as the executive decision-making body – with the option of establishing a directly-elected Mayor via a referendum. Councils were also required to have a publicly-available Constitution – a set of rules governing how the authority is run and setting out its procedures.
Only one council in Wales – Ceredigion – has held a referendum to establish a directly-elected Mayor, with the proposal rejected by 73%-27% in May 2004.
The Senedd was gradually granted law-making powers in devolved areas under the Government of Wales Act 2006. While only a few pieces of legislation have directly related to local government, many Welsh laws have made significant changes to services managed by local government – particularly social services, waste & recycling, planning and education.
Some of the major pieces of Welsh law that directly relate to local government that have been passed since devolution include:
- Local Government Measure 2009 – Created a system to promote and monitor local government improvement in the delivery of local services.
- Local Government Measure 2011 – Sought to improve local democracy by introducing democratic services committees, clarifying the role of scrutiny committees and granting elected members certain rights – such as a right to family leave. It also updated rules around referendums on the establishing elected mayors as well as rules on councillor pay and expenses – creating the Independent Remuneration Panel for Wales.
- Local Government Bylaws Act 2012 – Modernised the procedure by which local councils make bylaws and gave councils the power to issue on-the-spot fines for breaking certain bylaws.
- Local Government (Democracy) Wales Act 2013 – Established the Local Government Boundary Commission for Wales (which reviews ward boundaries and the number of councillors in each ward) and set the rules for local democracy reviews.
- Local Government Act 2015 – Put in place the legal procedure needed to merge or create new councils following the publication of the Williams Commission report (Part II, Part III). To date, it hasn’t been used.
- Local Government & Elections Act 2021 – Reduced the voting age in local elections in Wales to 16. Gave the 22 unitary authorities the choice to use single transferable vote (STV) in local elections. Has granted the unitary authorities and eligible town and community councils a “general power of competence” to act in the best interests of their respective areas within the bounds of the law (meaning they no longer have to ask if they have the legal power to do certain things). The Act also sets out the rules for regional joint-working between councils (via Corporate Joint Committees) as an alternative to mergers.
One issues in local government that’s prompted much debate but little action since devolution is the seeming dissatisfaction over the number of councils. The reforms in the 1990s were -as mentioned – supposed to being decision-making closer to the people. By the 2010s, depending on who you ask there were either too many councils, councils that are too small to deliver and manage certain services effectively or a system that’s inefficient with lots of duplication.
In 2006, the Beecham Review concluded that Wales “should aspire to be an example of excellence in small country governance”. That review didn’t make any specific recommendations around the structure of local government, but focused on citizen-centred services (what we now call co-production), streamlining decision-making and regulatory systems, improving performance monitoring and improving accountability3.
A few years later, the Williams Commission was established to consider the options for public service delivery further. Reporting back in 2014, the Commission recommended a reduction in the number of unitary authorities from 22 to between 10-12. You would think that’s what many people wanted, but it turns out nobody was happy with it.
While the Commission’s report was extensive and included recommendations beyond a mere change to the map, politicians put form before function, couldn’t figure out what they wanted local government to do and mergers were eventually abandoned. The Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) had, in the intervening years, become a powerful lobbying force and resisted moves to force through council mergers, preferring a voluntary approach to mergers and regional collaboration.
Although the WLGA’s proposals received a lukewarm reception from many councils, the joint establishment of city deals by the UK Government, Welsh Government and partner councils during the late-2010s and early-2020s resulted in the introduction of a limited form of regional governance anyway. It does, however, stop short of the directly-elected “Metro Mayor” system that’s been introduced in some parts of England.
As of 2021-22, the city regions will begin to be overseen by four Corporate Joint Committees (CJCs) made up of the leaders of each of the member local authorities. There has been criticism that the CJCs lack direct political accountability, while in some local authorities there have been rumblings of dissatisfaction over a perceived lack of delivery by city deals to date.
The Welsh Government sees regional working and collaboration as an important vehicle to deliver certain policy priorities in public transport, strategic planning, economic development and, possibly in future, school improvement (currently carried out by the regional education consortia).
These are policy areas that are perhaps too complex or big for the smallest councils to handle by themselves, but too locally impactful to be handled by the Welsh Government alone.
In its own way it’s a typically Welsh “half-and-half” compromise between council mergers and the status quo that may, in the end, not satisfy anybody and will require further reforms at some point down the line.
3. Review of Local Service Delivery (2006). “Chapter 7: Recommendations” (p69-81). Available at: http://www.wales.nhs.uk/sitesplus/documents/829/WAG%20-%20Beyond%20Boundaries%20%28Beecham%20Review%29%202006.PDF
