Local government reorganisation is so boring! I know what you are thinking: this article is going to be as interesting as a treatise on paint drying times. But hang on a minute. We often hear about the state and all its nefarious ways and means, for which there are two main arguments: either it is too large, or it is not doing enough.
Where does the state fit into everyday life?
Most of us hardly darken the doors of Westminster, or visit the HQ’s of SIS or GCHQ. We may have to deal with HMRC or DWP, but not often (if we can help it). No, almost every day our contact with the state is with ‘the council’, who mends the roads (occasionally), empties the bins, educates the kids, and looks after granny in the care home. The council is seen as the universal provider, and trouble starts when it falters, hence the complaints over potholes, flytipping, and planning.
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Since 2010, the relatively quiet world of local government has been in turmoil, mostly down to the fact that the incomes of many councils, thanks to austerity, have fallen by 50% to 60% in real terms. This means that there is far less cash to go around, and councils have had to cut back or find alternate sources of income, not always with success. This investigation by The New Statesman shows that this is a growing problem. There is also the matter of the green belt and issues as they affect the planning system. The conflict between well-funded ‘Not In My Backyard-isms’, and even better-funded land speculation leaves vulnerable local authorities as ‘piggy in the middle’ when trying to navigate minimising the housing affordability crisis.
The government’s response
Central government has picked at the problem of ensuring that there is a network of sustainable, viable, and local councils by adopting a ‘scattergun’ approach. Some areas have unitary councils, where most services are under one roof. Some experience devolution, where the government hands over powers to local authorities, and some are offered one-off grants, such as Pride in Place, which provide a sticking plaster for declining communities. None of this delivers some home rule to a heavily centralised England, and it has not stopped the problem of councils going bust.
Just over a year ago, the then Secretary of State for the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government (MHCLG), Angela Rayner, invited KCC and Medway to participate in restructuring/reorganisation and devolution. After a quick consultation with the districts, both councils said ‘yes please!’. However, in response, the MHCLG rescinded, saying that devolution was too difficult and instead only offered reorganisation. The councils thus delivered some proposals for local government reorganisation in Kent and Medway.
Proposals offered by Kent and Medway
This was an opportunity for the councils to come together and offer a fully thought-out proposal for reorganisation, but what the MHCLG received was a ‘rag-bag’ of poorly conceived ideas, designed to protect the special interests of those who came up with them. You can read what they are in the consultation on those proposals, but here are the five runners and riders:
- The KCC, Greater Kent Co-Prosperity Sphere: A single council for Kent run from Maidstone, because, according to KCC, we love our county so much.
- The East Kent Five (mark two): No, not a pop band, but a three-way split of Kent into East, West and North. The East consists of the former districts of Ashford, Folkestone, Dover, Canterbury and Thanet. It is a rehash of the EK5 proposal of a decade ago, which failed when Ashford pulled out and banjaxed the whole project.
- “Billy no mates Ashford”: I can only think that this proposal was conceived to avoid the row that Ashford will make for not being the HQ of an East Kent Unitary. To do this, East Kent is reduced to an unviable trinity of Dover, Canterbury and Thanet, within a 4 Unitary council structure for Kent, with Ashford getting its own mid-Kent kingdom. The people of East Kent will pay a high price if this one is picked. I cannot comprehend the thinking behind this proposal, simply because it makes no sense.
- The Medway slice and dice: In this version, there are still four unitary councils in Kent, but East Kent gets back Folkestone, and bits are lopped off and added on to make up three other unitary councils, mostly in a way that is going to cause trouble and confusion down the line.
- Ourselves alone: Here things really run amok, with Dartford and Gravesham forming their own unitary, making five, yes five, unitary councils in Kent. That’s five social service departments, five education committees, five highways and public transport bodies, in short, a nonsense.
When the MHCLG came up with this consultation, they may have expected that mad parochialism would be the response from the councils, which is why devolution was taken off the menu. Ask a flock of turkeys what they want for Christmas: they’ll shout ‘not me for Christmas dinner!’ Medway wants to be bigger, Dartford and Gravesham want none of that. Ashford wants its own kingdom, and Swale doesn’t want to be dismembered. It also seems that Dover and Thanet are prepared to do anything to avoid being conjoined with Ashford.
The wider implications for Kent and Medway
All very well, but none of them looks at the big picture, which is that local government is in a perpetual crisis and needs, firstly, to make sense to those it serves. Nobody would take their car to a garage only to find that they have to get the engine and gearbox fixed in different places. Unitary councils provide a solution: a one-stop shop for everything, which is what the public wants and needs from public services. Secondly, whatever scheme is picked, it has to be reasonably local, viable and sustainable enough to withstand the slings and arrows of misfortune. Only the three-unitary council scheme meets all three objectives, and is the one I recommended.
When I looked at this matter in a report, I firstly made some recommendations which were to adopt either the three unitary council proposal or an earlier two unitary council system devised way back in 1968 by the Redcliffe-Maud comission. Next, I went on to devise joint bodies to sort out disputes, standards in public life, and external affairs with neighbouring local authorities and government bodies. Simply chopping up parts of Kent into segments is only part of the process; you have to think ahead, and, where possible, create something future-proof and able to assimilate changes in legislation as they arise. I also suggested encouraging greater participation by altering the electoral system, which is beginning to throw up unrepresentative results based on an increasingly flawed first-past-the-post system.
I want to remind everyone that this is a one-time opportunity. The last one was 50 years ago, when I was young, and a great mistake was made in not adopting the Redcliffe-Maud proposals. This was mainly because the then Heath government listened to its backwoods men in the rural areas, who were afraid of being subsumed into an urban structure. Bearing in mind that only 27% of Kent’s population live in rural areas, there had to be some reality in balancing rural and urban life. The outcome was a deprived East Kent, greater urban sprawl for the towns of Kent, and declining rural bus services, because there has been little to no development in much of rural Kent.
In other words, be careful what you wish for! Don’t make the same mistake by adopting fanciful amalgamations of district council areas, just because someone’s nose will be put out of joint.
The consultation is over, and we must wait for the MHCLG to pronounce on a winner. They need to get on with it if the new council(s) are to start work within two years. I hope the ministry does not fall for any of the blarney that some councils have published.
If local government were in a satisfactory state, none of this would be necessary, but after 50 years of sometimes farcical bungling in some areas and increasingly stagnating coastal communities, the county and the districts deserve to be consigned to the dustbin of history. My only fear is that the MHCLG will make things worse by picking the wrong option, especially as regards to East Kent.
While the big bang on Friday 8th May swept over much the UK, and in the process overturned 100 years or more governance by a single party (Labour), or, in the case of the Conservative party, reducing it to fringe group mostly based in SE England; in Kent there was only a single election which was for Tunbridge Wells, where 15 seats were up for reelection, with the LibDems winning 11 of the 15 seats.
The usual hyperbole about a ‘historic election’ result were proffered by the winners, but in reality, it does not change things much overall.
