Room151 panel backs unitary councils and devolution

Bigger isn’t always better when it comes to local government, according to Sir Bob Kerslake, chair of the Peabody Trust, but “ …we need to move to unitary government and away from the two-tier model.”

Sir Bob, also a former head of the home civil service, captured the unanimous view of panelists brought together at the Room151 FDs’ Summit conference (to watch the full panel discussion, click here) to explore views on devolution and reorganisation.

He was joined, among others, by Andrew Carter, chief executive of the Centre for Cities, and Joanne Killian, chief executive of Surrey County Council.

Reorganisation and devolution has been a hot topic in local government circles after the government said it would publish a white paper in September last year. The document was, in the end, postponed but until after many councils across the country had undertaken research and consultation on potential reorganisation plans. Many county councils had begun making their case for becoming unitary councils.

Joanne Killian told the conference her council had calculated unitary status could save Surrey as much as £127m. A study by PwC, the professional services firm, for the County Councils Network, suggested last year that merging district with country councils could save as much as £3bn over five years.

Killian related reorganisation to lessons from the pandemic. “Big doesn’t always mean great, in terms of service,” she said.

“The critical thing for us, and maybe some of our districts too, was to get to a position of ensuring we had hyper resilient services. Covid has bought out the best in local government, but it has exposed those services where, for a variety of reasons, it’s been impossible to staff and develop those outputs in the way that we would have done.”

Andrew Carter also backed reorganisation on economic grounds. He described how many areas are “under bounded”—there is a mismatch between the political and economic geographies that councils cover.

Local government faces “greater” risks because of the misalignment, he added, and the OECD now has evidence that these mismatches result in “lower levels of prosperity.”

Sir bob gave three reasons for switching it a unitary structure: improve economic leadership; devolution is unlikely without “clearer local government leadership; unitaries are easier for the public to understand and therefore improve accountability.

But there are difficulties in reforming local government structures. “There’s a challenge in government between, I think, a recognition by [Robert] Jenrick and others that this should happen, against a strong pushback from within the Conservative party who see it as taking away their foot soldiers on the ground.
“I don’t know if it will happen but it should happen.”

Watch the full panel discussion here.

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