Reforming local government has been a rather fruitless endeavour since devolution – to the extent that a few years ago I added the absence of reform to a list of failures of devolution.
Despite dissatisfaction with the current unitary authority system – and the role of town & community councils – the system inherited from the UK Government in the 1990s remains stubbornly in place.
The issue go much deeper than the map, of course – all of which will be looked at in more detail here.
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The £7billion Question: “What should local government do?”
It’s been mentioned several times, but too much focus has been on the map and the number of councils, while little attention has been paid to the role of local government.
There have been numerous calls for more power to be devolved “down from Cardiff Bay”, but very little clarity on what or how.
We can’t decide how many councils or regional boards (or whatever) we need until we’ve worked out what they should do, how many staff and elected members they need to oversee it, funding & resources and how decisions would be made and scrutinised.
The closest we’ve come to an answer didn’t arrive with the Williams Commission, but two earlier reviews.
The thrust of the Simpson Review (2011) supported unitary authorities keeping the same responsibilities, but with more collaboration in specialist backroom functions such as procurement, commissioning and support services (i.e. IT, legal services)10.
Instead of duplicating functions, they would be soft-merged – and this has happened to a certain extent with the likes of the Shared Regulatory Service in Cardiff, Bridgend & Vale of Glamorgan.
A second review of the role of town & community councils (2018) provided more clarity. That review suggested that place-based services (cemeteries, street furniture, leisure facilities such as playing fields, cultural facilities like libraries, public toilets, litter collection and minor highway works like footpaths) should be provided by town & community councils.
The unitary authorities would be responsible for people-based and regulatory services such as education, social services, planning, major highway works, environmental health etc.11.
The big question hanging over that is whether smaller town & community councils are equipped to even take on running playing fields, let alone providing regular services like litter collection?
“The question nobody in Wales has yet answered is how you balance the desire for local control and loyalty with the desire to cut administrative costs and a sense of “over-governance”? The Tories tried to do so with unitary authorities and it clearly doesn’t work.”
People like the idea of local control, but hate the reality
This may be anecdotal evidence, but the impression I’ve often got is that people like the idea of retaining local control over services – even down to the town/community council level – but hate the administrative architecture needed to do that.
When the topic of council cuts comes around for public consultation, the top of the list is normally dominated by calls to cut the number of councillors or the number of council staff (especially managers and administrators).
People may have a point; there will no doubt be some council departments with as many managers and administrators as there are front-line staff (usually for the sake of providing at least some career progression in what would otherwise be dead-end roles).
Also, Wales has a higher proportion of county councillors per head (1-per-2,500) than both Scotland (1-per-4,450) and Northern Ireland (1-per-4,113).
It’s inevitable that the more councils you have “closer to the community”, the more likely that services will be duplicated near each other. You’ll always need a certain number of councillors and paid professionals to deliver and scrutinise those services.
The question nobody in Wales has yet answered is how you balance the desire for local control and loyalty with the desire to cut administrative costs and a sense of “over-governance”? The Tories tried to do so with unitary authorities and it clearly doesn’t work.
Lack of service consistency
The risk that service levels will be different between separate local authorities – sometimes next door to each other – is a hazard to local government. You can’t have true local government without giving councils enough autonomy to make mistakes (sometimes serious) through poor policy decisions.
If you demand that councils do things a certain way across the board then you don’t have local government. What you would have is a centralised local administration taking orders from the Welsh Government or elsewhere.
Some of the factors identified by the Williams Commission12 as contributing to the lack of consistency were:
- Scale – the ability of a local authority to plan strategically.
- Breadth and depth of capacity – the number, qualifications and experience of staff needed to deliver and plan services.
- Leadership & recruitment – Self-explanatory.
- Costs and overheads – The cost of management and democratic oversight.
The Commission concluded that one of the main drivers behind poor performance or higher overheads was the size of the authority; management is costlier in smaller councils, while the report suggested smaller local authorities were more likely to require Welsh Government intervention than larger ones.
Other reviews drew different conclusions.
The main thrust of the 2006 Beecham Review13 was that there was a cultural problem within local government. Their core recommendations focused on a switch to a citizen-centred model of service delivery (English: more consultation and buy-in from residents in creating policies and providing services) that, crucially, rewards innovation.
There have been other counter-arguments – such as from the Association of Public Service Excellence (APSE)14 – that there’s no hard evidence that the size of a local authority determines the quality of services (though they may have a vested interest in saying that as a local government consultancy). APSE cite Slovenia as an example, where municipalities all have similar functions but are often tiny – sometimes having a population of a few hundred people.
Accumulation of “unaccountable” regional boards and bodies
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↑ It’s a mess.
It’s becoming more and more difficult to tell which council, board, panel or commission/commissioner is in charge of what.
Decisions start being made behind closed doors with little to no independent scrutiny. Time is wasted in unnecessary board meetings; one thing I’ve noticed is that the same items of business at Local Health Boards are discussed by two or three committees and the main board itself.
On collaboration, the Williams Commission concluded15 that: “Rather than overcoming the complexity of relationships, boundaries and responsibilities….collaboration has in some cases added considerably to it by creating a further set of processes to be followed and relationships to be managed.”
It seems the default position of the Welsh Government and Senedd is to create a new board, commissioner, panel, advisory body etc. whenever there’s a major change to public service delivery.
The Public Service Boards were established under the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act; some of the health and social care ones via the Social Services & Wellbeing Act and, more recently, Corporate Joint Committees came into being via the Local Government & Elections Act.
This is instead of having a single coherent structure for regional collaboration/governance. Most of these strategic functions could (and probably should) have been merged into the Corporate Joint Committees – and maybe they will eventually.
The CJCs have problems, of course. They’re not held to account or scrutinised by anyone at the same level which is usually the first warning sign that at some point they’re going to make a massive mistake.
“The role of councillor has – community interest and campaigning aside – been largely reduced to wielding a rubber stamp. It’s gotten to a point where if Wales lost three-quarters of our councillors overnight you probably wouldn’t notice any difference to how councils are run.”
The emergence of “officer-led authorities”
When councils moved from the executive committee model of decision-making to a separate Leader and Cabinet, power didn’t shift from committees to Cabinet Members, but from elected councillors to unelected officers.
Council leaders, often responsible for budgets in the hundreds of millions of pounds, are selected by just a handful of people. All they need to do is make sure their party or group’s councillors are happy. The Leader and Cabinet don’t need any professional experience in their portfolio and often don’t need a public profile.
I doubt many people would be able to name their local council’s cabinet members (let alone leader) – a view backed by 2015 research commissioned by the Welsh Government16 – and that’s before mentioning directors and officers.
There is a legal duty for councillors “to have due regard” for officer recommendations. Straying from those recommendations – such as disagreeing with a planning recommendation or the agenda – often results in a warning of some form of disciplinary action, legal action against the council or simply being talked out by quoting constitutional clauses and standing orders.
The role of councillor has – community interest and campaigning aside – been largely reduced to wielding a rubber stamp. It’s gotten to a point where if Wales lost three-quarters of our councillors overnight you probably wouldn’t notice any difference to how councils are run.
“Check your latest council tax bill. If you have a town or community council see how much you’re paying them and ask yourselves whether that money would be useful to you right now? There’s perhaps a one-in-three chance that money isn’t being managed properly.”
Inconsistent size, capability and activity levels amongst town & community councils
Town & community councils often get overlooked in discussions about local government.
They’re responsible for around £50million of taxpayers’ money each year, are voluntary (at a time when people moan about salaried and career politicians) and may have provided services to the local community that people either take for granted or think one of the county councils provided.
The problem is the variation in their size and capabilities. Barry Town Council covers a population similar to the county borough of Merthyr Tydfil but has a fraction of the responsibilities and powers. Likewise, some community councils are so small they can do little else other than hold meetings.
The most concerning problem is the high proportion of town & community council accounts that are qualified by Audit Wales. At the start of 2020, a third of Welsh town and community councils had either failed to submit their accounts for audit or made mistakes/errors.
In 2021, Audit Wales described “serious weaknesses” in the internal audit procedures of town & community councils, with a third making inaccurate audit conclusions and two-thirds having the wrong terms of reference.
Additionally, I can find 29 public interest reports (this is a bad thing) on the Audit Wales website relating to town & community councils. This is all worrying if town and community councils are expected to take on responsibility for managing more services and community assets; they’re in danger of taking on far too much, too quickly.
“Why does that matter?” you ask. Check your latest council tax bill. If you have a town or community council see how much you’re paying them and ask yourselves whether that money would be useful to you right now? There’s perhaps a one-in-three chance that money isn’t being managed properly.
In Bridgend alone, there’ve been at least five cases of financial mismanagement by town and community councils in the last few years with at least one case leading to a criminal investigation.
10. Simpson Review (2011). “Local, Regional, National: What services are best delivered where?” (p 5-9). Available at: http://www.wales.nhs.uk/sitesplus/documents/829/Local%2C%20regional%2C%20national-%20what%20services%20are%20best%20delivered%20where%202011.pdf
11. Independent Review Panel on Community & Town Councils in Wales (October 2018). “Final Report” (p14-16). Available here: https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2019-05/independent-review-panel-on-community-and-town-councils-in-wales-final-report.pdf
12. Commission on Public Service Governance & Delivery (January 2014). Full Report (p68-75). Available at: https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2019-01/commission-public-service-governance-delivery-full-report.pdf
13. Review of Local Service Delivery (June 2006). “Beyond Boundaries: Citizen-Centred Local Services for Wales” (Chapter 3: The barriers to improving service delivery). Available at: http://www.wales.nhs.uk/sitesplus/documents/829/WAG%20-%20Beyond%20Boundaries%20%28Beecham%20Review%29%202006.PDF
14. Association of Public Service Excellence (August 2016). “Ways forward: Alternatives to council mergers in Wales” (p10-14). Available at: https://www.apse.org.uk/sites/apse/assets/File/Alternatives%20Wales%20(web).pdf
15. Commission on Public Service Governance & Delivery (January 2014). Full Report (p65-66). Available at: https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2019-01/commission-public-service-governance-delivery-full-report.pdf
16. Downe, J; Botrill, I; Wardle, L. Government Social Research (February 2015). “An Evaluation of Welsh Local Government Executive & Scrutiny Arrangements” (p15-19). Available at: https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/statistics-and-research/2019-07/150108-welsh-local-government-executive-scrutiny-arrangements-en.pdf
