Yes, you read that correctly.
The whole point of this site is to leave no stone unturned when it comes to independence – even ideas that, on paper, sound ridiculous.
Having spent most of last summer and autumn going into detail on how local government could or couldn’t be reformed after independence, today I’m going to look – half seriously, half tongue-in-cheek – at the most radical option of all: getting rid of local government altogether.
Some dry-humoured sorts may argue we’ve done a good job of it already. After all, local government used to be responsible for far more than it is now.
This isn’t as easy a question to answer as you might expect because there are varying degrees to which local government could be abolished. Stop chuckling.
In the same line of argument, many people who support devolution being abolished may still support the existence of the Wales Office.
- “Soft abolition” may mean scrapping local councils but replacing them with a centrally-appointed commissioner/commission to run local services in the same way councils already do. These commissioners could even be elected. In this instance, it would be the abolition of elected local councils rather than local government.
- “Middle-ground abolition” could result in local councils being abolished but replaced with a politically-accountable body made up of Senedd members; such as an area committee/commission. The Welsh Government would take over the running of local services.
- “Hard abolition” would remove all semblance of local decision-making and centralises it with the Senedd and Welsh Government.
Is abolishing local government even legal/constitutional?
As far as I’m aware, there’s no legal or constitutional requirement for local government to exist. It’s just a good idea to have it (for reasons I’ll go into later).
Local government’s powers and responsibilities can be changed by the legislature (in our present case, both the Senedd and UK Parliament) through changes to the law. The same goes for the number of local government units, tiers of local government and the rules on how councils are run.
If the Senedd or UK Government decided they wanted to abolish local government and had majority support to do so, they probably could – it would just be a very messy process.
While there’s been plenty of polling on subjects such as Senedd abolition, independence and electoral reform, as far as I’m aware there’s been no polling on local government abolition (or reform, for that matter).
Has it ever been tried before?
In some parts of the world “local government” is a trade descriptions violation; the central government may appoint a governor or prefect to oversee local government functions in its name.
One example I found is Malaysia, which abolished all elected local government bodies at the lowest tier (i.e. counties) in 1976. These elected councils were replaced with civil servants and councillors appointed by the respective state legislatures.
So, technically, local government wasn’t abolished as such, but it became the responsibility of the federal states who outsourced its administration to appointed representatives.
It would be the equivalent of the Senedd appointing the councillors and chief executives of the 22 unitary authorities; they would still exist but not on their own terms in their own right.