It’s extraordinary that a profound reshaping – and shrinking – of our democracy is happening under our noses, and virtually no one notices. For baffling reasons, soon after the general election a government with a sky-high in-tray of problems embarked on a gigantic local council reorganisation no one knew about.
It didn’t feature in the manifesto, nor in the local government secretary Steve Reed’s conference speech last week – but England has plans to axe unknown numbers of local councillors – some estimates put it at nearly 90%. The white paper outlining these plans actually boasts that there will be “fewer local politicians”, pandering disgracefully to the general scorn for politics. Yet voters trust councillors twice as much as they do Westminister politicians.
For all the talk of localism and connecting to neighbourhoods, these are the unheralded foot soldiers of democracy. It is councillors who run political parties and much that binds their communities. Few people ever join political parties, yet the whole tottering democratic system relies entirely on those who do. Running the council and becoming a councillor is part of party members’ purpose and motivation. Abolishing so many will diminish democratic engagement over time.
Many councils will be ordered to merge into unitary councils to serve a population of at least 500,000, to deliver all local services; this will entail the abolition of hosts of district councils. (There is some “flexibility” for some with populations of fewer than 300,000.) Some won’t go quietly. Some submit alternative plans, grouping together so more of them survive. County councils, the winners from enlargement, strongly support the plan: today they launched a salvo urging the government to plough on and block their ears to the districts’ counter-plans.
The budget approaches, a wretched brew of hard choices whichever way the chancellor turns. On all sides the beleaguered government faces bereft public services in need of money. The plight of councils is particularly serious: there is no money for social care’s escalating needs, Send children or the rising numbers being taken into care. There were smirks all round from other parties when Kent council, one of many captured by Reform, had to backtrack on nonsense promises for cutting of waste and taxes in its array of unicorn policies: within months Kent and the others declared defeat, finding few “net zero” and “equality” savings; it is likely to raise council tax by the maximum 5%.
Council budgets have dwindled sharply as a proportion of all spending says Prof Tony Travers, local government expert at the London School of Economics, and now councils’ democratic voice will shrink too. Hoping to save money with fewer councils “rationalised” under larger unitaries means some will be enormous. North Yorkshire will be a three-hour drive across; forget delivery close to home. Is there a perfectly efficient size of council? “No,” says Travers. “There’s no evidence that Hampshire, with its district councils, is better or worse governed than say, Shropshire or Buckinghamshire unitaries.” Will this save money? House of Commons library research finds: “It is not clear from available evidence whether unitary councils save money compared with a two-tier system.”
Portsmouth, one of the many towns and cities resisting, protests that its 208,000 population is an adequate size: it already delivers all services well, has no debts, and no wish to be swallowed by Hampshire. Susan Brown, Labour leader of Oxford city council with 166,000 people, is struggling to avoid being eaten by Oxfordshire into a monster council unitary of 750,000. She tells me she’s bidding to enlarge the city’s border to include its green belt, and become a unitary controlling all their services. All these boundaries will be marked out finally next March by the minister.
Does anyone care much, when most are clueless about what councils do and few vote in local elections? Well they may sit up and take notice when it dawns on them that Ipswich, Norwich, Exeter, Reading and many more ancient towns and cities will be devoured by mega-county councils that feel distant, not local at all. It may dawn on Labour MPs that this is a reverse gerrymander, damaging parties of the left. Many of these lost town councils have been little islands of Liberal Democrat yellow and Labour red, amid deep blue counties, which will now outvote them. Besides, Reform will sweep through quite a lot more next May. Don’t lose these small strongholds.
Britain already has fewer elected representatives than European countries of a similar size, says Travers. Cavalier map planners at Westminster never consider how reorganisations cause huge waste of time and effort. Council CEOs complain of time spent on this, amid all their other crises. What to do about contracts when the council may no longer be there? Who wants to absorb Thurrock with its £1bn debt? Oxfordshire county council just signed an eight-year highways contract: can that be unpicked if Susan Brown of Oxford city gets her way?
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The government will have to relent and allow many of these districts to team up into their own smaller unitaries, closer to their citizens. You may have fallen asleep by now: local authority politics rarely electrify. But when this actually happens, the government may find people care more than expected about losing their council. Councils need three vital reforms: the creation of a promised national social care service and an urgent reform of property taxation, starting with the preposterous council tax. And proportional representation elections to stop takeovers with minority support. People will ask: why did they go with this mighty distraction instead?
