In the previous piece, I looked at governance at the community level. Today, it goes up a level to counties and regions.
In practical terms, this could either retaining the current system of unitary authorities and just changing boundaries (if deemed practical):
It could also mean returning to a form of two-tier local government. Or, transforming the city regions and corporate joint committees into a more formalised tier of regional government and mixing and matching beneath it.
Once again, I’ll be looking at the financial issues, the reform process, and political/electoral implications in later parts:
The safest bet would be to stick with unitary authorities – though we can quibble over the number of them and their responsibilities as much as we like. The danger is that in choosing the “easy option” we cause more problems than we intend to solve – particularly in terms of scale and capacity, which the Williams Commission aimed to address but was ultimately let down by politics.
Unitary authorities combined with more formally constituted combined authorities – headed by a directly-elected mayor – is perhaps as far as most people are willing to go.
I included special purpose boards and county commissions almost for the sake of it, but having followed my own local authority for a long period I’m coming around to the idea. They are a more intellectually honest model of how things are run already instead of pretending that “the council” runs things and you need 50-70 councillors to scrutinise it.
The drawback is the idea is a bit American – where they have a tradition of very small councils and directly-elected executives. While both feed off the romanticism Wales has for running everything by committee, you still need people who are willing to step out of line or doggedly pursue things inside the room. County commissions and special purpose boards don’t really allow for that. One thing I will say is that elected school boards might be an appropriate replacement for school governors.
Some form of two-tier local government makes sense on pretty much every level which is precisely why it was abandoned in the 1990s – because we don’t like things that work in Wales and we prefer loose collaboration and mega committees over formal fixed structures.
It deals with the demand for a local connection between councillor and their local area (and also gives the lower tier significant statutory and regulatory powers) and it deals with the issue of scale and capacity by ensuring only the larger county councils manage things like education and social care. The drawbacks are potential confusion over who does what (as if people are clear as to what the unitary authorities do now) and it potentially being more expensive because of duplicated functions – though there are ways around this such as by limiting the number of managerial positions.
The regional issue is largely separate from the rest as it’s not closely tied to a particular system of local government – commissions, unitary authorities or two-tier.
We’re experimenting with it in Wales through the Corporate Joint Committees. The jury’s out, but it’s a start. A few tweaks – such as greater transparency, clear leadership and proper scrutiny procedures – and they would become the combined authorities as set out in this piece.
A separate tier of regional authorities would be a step further and would probably the best vehicle for devolving powers from Cardiff Bay before independence.
Like it or not, that means more politicians – which is also the biggest drawback. One of the biggest plus points is that while members of a combined authority might have the needs of their own council at the forefront of their minds, members of a regional authority would need to think and act regionally.
Part V and Part VI have been based on an assumption that Wales would remain a unitary state – the Senedd retaining all law-making powers – after independence.
A more fringe position is that an independent Wales could adopt a federal system of government, or some form of internal devolution. I’ll be looking at that proposition in more detail in the next mini-series, unimaginatively titled “A Federal Wales”:
