I remind everybody of my entry in the register of interests, as a councillor in Kirklees in West Yorkshire—a unitary council—and as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. The order enacts decisions made in response to the financial calamity that befell local government in Northamptonshire through its county council. It was clearly imperative that action was taken; it is my understanding that change had to be made. However, I would like to comment on and perhaps challenge some of the decisions that have resulted from the decision to reorganise local government in Northamptonshire.
First, it seems that we as a country are in danger of taking the “local” out of local government. I say that as somebody who serves a very large ward—not the largest in the country, but one of the largest—at a unitary level and understands the demands on the three councillors who serve a population of 16,000. From my experience, it means that some of the very local issues become less important to councillors, who have to deal with high-level strategic decisions, but remain very important to local people. When you have a big ward, there is a tension between the strategic and the local. If we are not careful, local people often miss out. That is more so with large wards serving rural communities.
I do not know the county of Northants very well, but I guess that some of its wards will be significantly rural in nature. In my experience, this creates a potential disconnect between decision-makers and the people they serve. There is potential for the Government to give additional powers to parish and town councils, so that they can take up some of the very local responsibilities
that would previously have been the remit of district councillors. That would enable a local element to be retained in local governance. I will leave it there and hope that the Minister will have some sort of response to it.
The second element is the size of the two unitary councils and the number of councillors they have. One has got 93 and the other has 78. In my experience, that is quite a large number. The Explanatory Memorandum states that there will be a boundary review for those wards before the next local elections in 2025. Are the Government thinking about reducing the number of councillors, because that is what a boundary review could achieve? On balance, having fewer councillors might improve governance but, on the other hand, it increases the size of wards and makes it more difficult for ward councillors to undertake their local responsibilities. Is that in view?
My next point is a general one about when there are 93 councillors—even 78—and only 10 of them are actual decision-makers. They are in the cabinet; they make the decisions for the council. That leaves another 83; they can do scrutiny, but they are not taking decisions, which is what local people expect them to be doing. Apart from the annual budget, the local plan and, perhaps, an annual children’s plan, there is not much that every councillor has to take decisions on. There has to be a rethink of the roles and responsibilities of councillors who are not in a cabinet. It can make councillors feel remote from decision-making. As ward size makes people feel remote, councillors feel remote if they are not in the cabinet. In my experience, remote decision-making fuels discontent and we should take note of that.
Paragraph 7.6 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which the Minister referred to, outlines the benefits of the new structure:
“aligning infrastructure; housing and environment services to help deliver growth; advantages in … health and wellbeing; improved education and skills provision”,
though I have to say that the responsibilities of local councils regarding education are very limited these days. The levers that they have to change anything are minimal, so I would not have referred to education in that way. Does the Minister agree that there could be an alternative to achieving that aim, which I think will come up in the next few months in a number of ways? A constructive collaboration, formalised between districts and the county, could achieve the same aims without the upheaval of a structural reorganisation. This would be an upheaval, and it takes a long time—several years—for councils to get on their feet and begin delivering strategically, not operationally, the services that they should.
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The second point I want to make about the benefits of the reorganisation is on the projected savings of £12 million per annum. Such figures are always produced by the protagonists of the reorganisation. My knowledge of reorganisations tells me that that saving might not be the case. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee highlighted that it hoped the House would,
“seek a commitment from the Minister to review whether the benefits and savings have been met.”
I hope the Minister will be able to commit to such a review, because it will inform future changes, which is important.
Another point I would make about the changes is about the children’s trust, which I understand will be set up for a very good reason: so that there is continuity in children’s services in the whole county of Northamptonshire. I have had one experience of a children’s trust and it was not particularly helpful or positive. It becomes dominated by children’s services officers and the accountability factor of local governance, as exemplified by local councillors, gets lost. I would like the Minister to give some thought to that, although maybe not to respond today.
The consultation was interesting. It seems that people were saying, “We’ve got failure. We need to change. This’ll do.” That is how it came out when I read it. They were accepting a fait accompli, really.
Change was, of course, inevitable. We had to have a fresh start, given the financial failure of the large council in the area. We have had a review, but I wonder whether anybody has ever reflected on how that failure happened. Someone somewhere must have known; surely action should have been taken at that stage, before failure happened. It is no good for local people who rely on services. Where was some intervention? There seemed to be a failure somewhere in local governance.
Finally, I would point out that England has the fewest elected representatives of all the major European countries, and when compared to the United States of America. The direction of travel is to reduce them here. I worry that we are reducing the number of elected representatives to the detriment of local democracy. Again, I think that will fuel discontent. If people do not feel that they know who is taking the decisions, and where, it does not help anyone; it makes people cynical about local government. Having been a representative in local government for a large number of years, that is the last thing I would want to happen. However, I understand the need for the order, and I support what is going on.