Exeter unitary repercussions

Some predictable repercussions from the decision to grant Exeter unitary status...

• There has been a predictable bitter battle of the press releases between Devon County Council ("Exeter Unitary plan branded as 'costly madness'") and Exeter City Council ("Devon County Council Peddling Lies"). Devon County Council claims council tax will rise by £200 in Exeter; Exeter City Council says this is a blatant lie.
• As expected, Devon County Council has launched a judicial review of the decision, claiming a "cast-iron case of malpractice". The exchange of letters between Peter Housden (the Permanent Secretary at the Department of Communities and Local Government) and John Denham (the Secretary of State) is being cited as evidence.
• It is my guess that Peter Housden's objections to the basis on which the Exeter & Norwich unitary decisions were being taken were the reason that the decisions were not publicly announced by Gordon Brown when the Cabinet met in Exeter earlier in the month. The timings indicated by the letters lend support to this.
• The leaking of these letters to Iain Dale (see also his post here) is a surprising and serious matter. While it's great for the public that they are in the public domain, the leak was clearly a breach of regulations if not trust. The letters were clearly leaked in order to further someone's agenda, and it is odd there hasn't so far been an official statement condemning the leak and promising an internal inquiry.
• Exeter City Council and Ben Bradshaw attacked the legal action as a waste of taxpayers money.
• Shadow local government minister Bob Neill has said "This unitary restructuring is expensive, divisive and fundamentally undemocratic. It will do nothing to improve local services, but merely distract councils as they rearrange the deckchairs of local government. The Government's reckless and mad dash plans contradict the Boundary Commission advice. This is yet another example of Labour fiddling with the constitution just to create dividing lines. Gordon Brown is pursuing the politics of division, setting city verses county, for petty partisan advantage."
• Meanwhile, the House of Lords is investigating the unitary decision. This is interesting given the behind-the-scenes lobbying of the House of Lords that Devon County Council has been undertaking since the decision. Whatever the rights or wrongs of the unitary decision, for an unelected bunch of peers to have the whip hand over a question of local democracy would be bizarre.
• Devon County Council has told its employees not to staff talk with Exeter City Council colleagues about transition arrangements without approval. Meanwhile a motion of non-cooperation over the transition will be voted on tomorrow (18 February) by Devon County Council. Lack of cooperation between councils would indeed lead to greater costs, so perhaps Devon County Council is hoping to make its prophecy come true?
• The statutory instrument that will be voted on by the House Commons (subject to legal challenge and the timing of the general election) has been published in draft. Item 3.1 reads "On 1st April 2011 Exeter shall cease to form part of the county of Devon". The 2010 Exeter City Council elections have been cancelled, and the terms of office for current councillors will continue until local government election day . An "Implementation Executive" is proposed to manage the transition, with 11 representatives of Exeter City Council and 4 representatives of Devon County Council. Each of the four major parties in Exeter (Conservatives, Labour, LibDem and Liberal) are to be represented on this Executive.
• UDPATE 18 Feb: Here's the news that the legal bid against the unitary decision is a joint one with Norfolk County Council.

More reactions to Exeter unitary decision

Following on from this earlier post...

Devon MPs and PPCs

• Geoffrey Cox, Conservative MP for Torridge and West Devon, has condemned the decision as a "political fix".

• Gary Streeter, Conservative MP for South West Devon, has said: "It will be a disaster for Exeter and for the rest of Devon, ripping the heart out of the beating body."

• Dr Jon Underwood, parliamentary spokesman for the Liberal Democrats in Tiverton and Honiton has said "I've been assured that MPs and Lords from our party will do what they can to stop this scandalous piece of electioneering from being implemented. It isn't too late to stop the further loss of services and increased council tax."

• I've not yet seen comments from Conservative MPs Anthony Steen (Totnes) and Angela Browning (Tiverton and Honiton) but they are known to be against the Exeter unitary option.

• I've not yet seen comments from Alison Seabeck, Labour MP for Plymouth Devonport, but in a letter to the Boundary Committee in 2008 she endorsed the unitary Exeter model that was announced yesterday.
  

• I've not yet seen comments from the Liberal Democrat MP for Torbay, Adrian Sanders. Based on Torbay's experience of being a small unitary authority, he proposed in 2008 a three-unitary model for Devon.

Exeter City Council

• The leader of the Conservative group on Exeter City Council, Yolonda Henson, has said: "I am delighted but I feel, three months to a general election, the timing of this has been done to save Ben Bradshaw. It has been done in undue haste."

• The leader of the Liberal group, Joan Morrish, has said: "This is a great victory for local democracy and commonsense. This is evidence of what happens when all the parties on the city council work together with one aim. We have lots of challenges ahead and need to keep the same idea for what is best for Exeter, but this is wonderful news."

• Pete Edwards, leader of Exeter's Labour group, and chair of the unitary changeover committee, has said the county council does not need to move out of county hall just because they are in a place they don't represent any more.

Other

• In the Commons yesterday, Caroline Spelman, Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, described the restructuring as "expensive and undemocratic" and called for a debate in Parliament.

• Martyn Oates, the BBC's South West political editor has some useful FAQs.

Exeter Council saved!

Yesterday afternoon was spent engaging in some excited Tweeting at the announcement that Exeter unitary council has been given the go ahead by the Government (BBC News report).

The current round of discussions about the reorganisation of local government in Devon has been going on for five years. And this isn't the end: there first needs to be a vote in Parliament; Devon County Council is apparently fighting for a judicial review; and the Conservatives have promised to revoke the decision if they form the next government later this year.

However, the status quo would, I think, be not an unreasonable outcome. The key thing as far as I am concerned is that the option of a Devon unitary council is no longer part of the agenda. This option would have resulted in the abolition of Exeter's council altogether. I argued against this as the worst option from a democratic standpoint.

So I send my heartfelt thanks to all the Exeter councillors and other individuals who have fought the abolition of our city council over the last five years.

This hasn't been a party political issue - Exeter City Council has been almost unanimous in its opposition to abolition; Devon County Council has been almost unanimous in favour of abolition; with a variety of views from members of district councils. This has led to some interesting tensions within parties. And these will continue.

For example, there are tricky questions for Exeter Conservative PPC Hannah Foster: will she demur from her party's policy to revoke the decision? If not, she will look as though she is failing to stand up for Exeter. If she does, she will lose her reputation as a standard-bearer for David Cameron. I've not seen a comment from her yet. I suspect she will come up with a formulation along the lines of "It is right not to make such a big change in the current economic climate. Who knows what might be possible in a few years time?"

The LibDem Leader of Exeter City Council Adrian Fullam is delighted with the decision. Nick Harvey, LibDem MP for North Devon, condemned it.

In other reactions, Hugo Swire, Conservative MP for East Devon, puts a strongly robust view against the decision, and calls for a full inquiry into the process. The Labour MP for Exeter, Ben Bradshaw, puts the counter view. The Labour blogger Ust Oldfield is scathing about the response of the Conservative leader of Devon County Council. The leader of Teignbridge District Council says the whole process has been a waste of money.

Meanwhile, the Local Government Chronicle reports concerns of the Permanent Secretary at the Department for Communities & Local Government, Peter Housden. Housden wrote to the Secretary of State, pointing out that the decision departed from criteria previously published by ministers on how unitary bids would be assessed and that "I am concerned that the approach you are currently proposing makes it difficult for me to meet the standards expected of me as accounting officer”.

Reflections on the threat to Exeter democracy

Some personal reflections on the news that the Boundary Committee for England has advised that Exeter should lose its city council in favour of a huge unitary Devon council.

I'm not going to go into the hugely complicated details of the whys and wherefores of how we ended up in such a ridiculous anti-democratic situation. It's easy to blame the parties in Exeter, the parties in Devon, the Boundary Committee, and the Secretary State who initiated this unwanted process. But I'm prepared to presume that all were trying to do the best as they saw it.

And all is not yet lost: John Denham, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, won't be taking a decision on what should happen for six weeks, allowing representations from all interested parties. It is also in doubt whether there is time for legislation to be passed before the General Election.

But I've followed the story closely, read through all the documentation, and I want to make three points about the process we've been through. (Section and page references are to the document "Advice to the Secretary of State on unitary local government in Devon", 7 December 2009, pdf available via this link)



1. Democracy should be the main concern

The function of local government is not just delivering services. Otherwise we could abolish councils altogether and have a team of civil servants dictating how much gets spent on which services and what policies are to be enacted.

The financial aspects of local government are therefore important, but so too are the democratic mechanisms by which those in power are held to account by those who are subject to that power.

So how are democratic ideals reflected in the criteria the Boundary Committee were given to evaluate proposals for changing local government in Exeter?

Proposals needed to...

- be affordable
- be supported by a broad cross-section of partners and stakeholders
- provide strong, effective and accountable strategic leadership
- deliver genuine opportunities for neighbourhood flexibility and empowerment
- deliver value for money and equity in public services

The first and fifth criteria are not about democracy ("equity" was interpreted solely in terms of access to services).

At first glance, the second, third and fourth criteria seem to be about democratic accountability. But actually they're not:

For the second criterion, the Boundary Committee interpreted "support by a broad cross-section" as finding instances of support amongst a variety of partners and stakeholders in the consultation process. They did not consider whether the proposals would result in ongoing popular support for whatever local government administration happens to wield power in the future. If, say, elections repeatedly returned Devon mega-council administrations with sharply differing policies to those favoured by the 125,000 inhabitants of Exeter, the Devon mega-council would be seen as lacking a democratic mandate in Exeter. But the Boundary Committee's interpretation of this criterion meant that this consideration was ignored.

For the third criterion, the Boundary Committee didn't see democracy as an integral part of "strong" and "effective" strategic leadership. Indeed, their assumption seems to have been that a substantial part of "strategic leadership" is a high-profile leader, rather than a council that builds wide consensus towards a clear, sound, agreed strategy. Meanwhile, their main concern about "accountability" seemed to be that having different councils responsible for different services tends to "blur" who is responsible for which service, rather than the more democratic concern that abolishing a city council decreases the extent to which the people of the city can call its representatives to account. Clarity of responsibility is important for democracy, but that's not the same as democracy.

For the fourth criterion, neighbourhood "empowerment" looks promising, but it is clear (section 2.18 onwards) that this is interpreted as "clarity of roles and responsibilities", good communication with residents, and "community forums" that "reflect community identities" to enable views to be heard. This ended up in a proposal (section 4.27) to create a "Community Board" for Exeter that would, inter alia, develop "vision", implement a community action plan, influence budget allocations, promote community cohesion, hold the Devon mega-council to account, shape local planning policy and act as a sounding board.

The Boundary Committee is vague on how such "Community Boards" would be appointed, despite describing them as "a well thought out approach to localisation" (p. 15). As far as it is concerned, the Devon mega-council is democratically elected, so it is up to that body to ensure that Community Boards are representative of the communities they cover. So, in essence, Exeter's Community Board would be a glorified sub-committee of the Devon mega-council, with no direct democratic mandate from the people of Exeter.

It would be truly unbelievable for the Boundary Committee to imagine that such a Community Board offers a better model of local democracy and empowerment than our current city council.

If democracy had been the main concern of this review, than the financial aspects would naturally have been a big consideration because the democratic mechanisms would need to be evaluated for cost-effectiveness. But by ignoring democracy, the Boundary Committee ended up focusing solely on the delivery of services.

So, in summary, democracy was not the main concern of this review of local government, and was consequently ignored by the Boundary Committee. The result was a proposal that constitutes a massive reduction in democratic representation and accountability.



2. The status quo should be an option

Two proposals were examined by the Committee:

• a county unitary authority, aka the Devon mega-council (i.e. all of Devon, except Plymouth and Torbay)
• a "two unitary pattern comprising Exeter & Exmouth and Rural Devon", aka the Greater Exeter proposal

This method of evaluating proposals (i.e. whether or not a proposal "has the capacity" to deliver specified outcomes) does not allow a systematic comparison either with the status quo.

The current setup is that Exeter has a city council that looks after the city's housing, planning, parking, environmental health, museums, libraries, parks, waste collection and so on. It seems fit-for-purpose, has one of the lowest council taxes in the country, and has a democratic mandate from the people of the city. Most importantly, the folk of Exeter can chuck the current buggers out if we don't like what they're doing in the city.

Meanwhile, we also have a Devon county council that is responsible for schools, social services, roads and a few other things that are typical of county councils. This council also seems fit-for-purpose, and is able to defer to Exeter when that makes sense. Despite being based in Exeter, though, it seems (to me) a slightly remote entity.

A sharper division between the two councils might arguably be helpful, and I personally would prefer more powers over Exeter moving from the county council to the city council; but in essence, there's no obvious problem to be solved here. Centralising all decision-making in a mega-council would in principle save money, but then of course so would centralising all decision-making in Westminster, and we don't do that.

So if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Indeed, the Boundary Committee notes (p. 13) that 61% of responses received during consultation were in favour of continuing with the current local government structures.

But the Boundary Committee was very clear (p. 12) that their remit was not to compare new proposals with the status quo, but simply to assess the capacity of the new proposals.

Conversely, many Exeter residents would feel disenfranchised if their elected City Council is abolished without a vote. And this sense of powerlessness would only grow when in the future there is some decision that the mega-council takes that goes against the interests of Exeter. There will be no democratic buy-in.

I predict that under a Devon mega-council, Exeter residents would grow resentful of their inability to decide their own affairs and those in rural Devon would grow resentful of what they would claim to be Exeter's preferential treatment.



3. The process should be democratic

I wrote above that the review was unwanted, and that there is no obvious problem to be solved here. I might of course be wrong about that. There might well be a groundswell of opinion in favour of change. The point is we just don't know. The 125,000 people in the city of Exeter have not been asked, and there are no plans to put the options to the vote.

Apparently, there was "strong opposition to removing Exeter from the rest of the county for local government purposes". How could the Boundary Committee know how strong the opposition is? It carried out no surveys. How strong was the opposition to abolishing Exeter's council? They don't know.

Instead, we have had two consultation exercises that have been managed by an unelected quango consisting of 8 people. It is not clear that submissions to the exercises have been either representative or properly taken into account. Huge sums have had to be wasted on lobbying by the respective councils, on responding to the process and on the legal challenges. This all comes out of our taxes, both council tax and general taxation.

The Committee admits (p. 12) that they did no systematic comparison of the proposals under consideration with the status quo. The balance of the submissions to the consultation exercise was in favour of the status quo. Indeed, many were strongly against the Devon mega-council idea. Yet the level of support for the different options was ignored. Where is the democracy in this?

Moreover, this method of evaluating proposals also does not encourage competing proposals to be compared systematically. This is a serious flaw.

The Appendix to the Committee's advice contains a breakdown of the preferences expressed by submissions made in the consultation exercises. Bearing in mind the caveats about lack of representativeness and quantitative intent, this data shows that 61% want the status quo; 15% want the Devon mega-council; and 11% want some form of Exeter unitary. Given that the consultation made clear that a simple Exeter unitary was not a proposal under consideration, it is possible that this option might have garnered more support than this.

Why am I labouring this point about the level of support for the different options? Well, precisely because of the reason the Committee ended up with its conclusions.

The Committee decided that the Devon mega-council proposal has the capacity to deliver the Secretary of State's five specified outcomes (the list beginning with "be affordable", above). And that the Greater Exeter proposal would be likely to deliver four out of the five. The one it wouldn't is "be supported by a broad cross-section of partners and stakeholders".

Specifically, looking at the crucial page 29 of the advice document, it is clear (when the status quo is excluded as an option) that the bulk of submissions from Exeter - including the University, the City Council, the Chamber of Commerce, the residents associations - want some form of unitary status for Exeter. But many submissions from outside Exeter - typically county-level organisations such as the Devon & Cornwall Police Authority and the Devon Primary Care Trust - were strongly opposed to this option.

So, to try to make the point as clear as I can...

As far as the Committee can tell based on its limited data on public opinion:

1. The status quo is the preferred option of the majority.
2. If the status quo isn't possible, the people of Exeter would prefer a unitary Exeter to a Devon mega-council.
3. If the status quo isn't possible, rural Devon would prefer a Devon mega-council to a unitary Exeter.

But the net result is that because of the way the review has been set up, the advice that goes to the Secretary of State is for a Devon mega-council. That is, Exeter not only loses its chance for unitary status, it loses what democratic autonomy it already has. Which is a minority view by quite some margin!

Why can't it be the people of Exeter who decide if they want their city council abolished?



Final Thought

It is open to the Secretary of State to decide on any of the options, with or without modification. Or he can take no action.

I would humbly suggest to him on the basis of the three points above that the Boundary Committee have done what they have been asked to do, but that this exercise has shown that there is no groundswell of popular support for the abolition of Exeter City Council.

Bad news for Exeter

The Boundary Committee has just published its advice that Exeter City Council should be abolished in favour of a single council for Devon. Not good news.

It's now up to John Denham, the Labour MP for Southampton Itchen, who is currently Secretary of State for "Communities and Local Government" to make a final decision on what happens to Exeter's city democracy.

Exeter politics rather interesting

Exeter is rather an interesting place to live politically. Our county council, Devon, is Conservative; our city council is LibDem; and our MP, Ben Bradshaw, is Labour.

Yet even these facts hide further complexity. Devon County Council was LibDem until this year; on Exeter City Council there are roughly equal numbers of Labour, LibDem and Conservative councillors; and until 1997 the parliamentary seat was Conservative for much of its history.

So what's happening at the moment?

Devon County Council, which is based in Exeter, is having to make £20 million worth of cuts, including the loss of 500 jobs. Care homes look to be particularly badly affected.

In relation to Exeter City Council, we continue to wait for the long-delayed results of the Boundary Committee's review of local government in Devon. Like a Sword of Damocles hanging over us, the city's 800-year-old rights to take decisions about its own affairs could be removed at any time, without a vote by its inhabitants.

Having an MP from the governing party has not helped us with this issue, as with most other issues. Ben Bradshaw is a decent, well-liked chap, last week named Politician of the Year by Stonewall. He's often seen on his bicycle around the city, and he comes across very well both on television and in person. He claims far less in MPs' expenses than most of his colleagues; and he supported reform of the expenses system in 2008, well before the recent scandal.

But as a member of the Government since 2001, he never votes against the party line.

According to TheyWorkForYou.com, Ben has voted for student top-up fees, ID cards, the Iraq war, nuclear power, the hunting ban, 90-day detentions without charge, and reduced Parliamentary scrutiny of new legislation.

Recently, Ben has...

• jumped on the media bandwagon that centred on misquoting Emma Thompson on racism in Exeter and the University of Exeter.
• lent credibility to the ridiculous suggestion to sell off the Met Office, at just the moment when we need the Met Office most focused on research in climate change rather than commercial shenanigans.
• supported the proposal for 10 new nuclear power stations around the country, including Hinkley Point, less than 40 miles from Exeter (as the wind blows).
• (on the plus side) pleaded with Transport Secretary over the £2 million the city council has to find to fund the Government's concessionary bus fare scheme. But we're not in the clear yet, and he makes no acknowledgment that it was his government that imposed the scheme without funding it properly.

2010 will herald elections for Exeter City Council and of course the General Election. Less parochially, it may be may-or-break year for our planet.

We live in interesting times.

Exeter update

Congratulations to my MP Ben Bradshaw, who has been promoted to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. He's a likeable, eloquent chap, often seen cycling between appointments in Exeter.

It's just a shame Ben belongs to a government that was responsible for the illegal invasion of Iraq, that often fails to resist authoritarian measures, and that is stumbling over the climate change.

Meanwhile, the Devon County Council elections have produced little change in Exeter. Four Labour holds, three LibDem holds, one Conservative hold, and one gain by the Conservatives from the LibDems (Duryard and Pennsylvania - look who failed to mobilise the student vote).

What should have been the overriding issue of the campaign - fighting Devon County Council's plan to abolish Exeter City Council - was scarcely discussed.

Devon Election Results (2)

Further to the overall view of yesterday's election results for Devon County Council, there are some surprising things about the 21 electoral divisions that changed parties.

All but three changed from LibDem to Conservative. But talking about a "swing" from LibDem to Conservative could be a bit misleading. Of course this does look like what happened in a few places. For example, in Holsworthy Rural, the LibDem share of the vote went down by 22 percentage point and the Conservative share went up by 18 percentage points. But in other divisions, the situation is more complex.

A good example is Seaton Coastal. In 2005, the LibDem had a majority of about 900. In 2009, the Conservative had a majority of 135. But, bearing in mind that the turnout almost halved, look at the share of the vote. The Conservative share of the vote actually remained exactly the same in both elections. The reason they won is that the LibDem share went down by 17 percentage points. The UKIP vote went up by almost the same amount.

This pattern of the LibDem vote going down and the UKIP vote going up ocurred in many of the seats won by the Conservatives in Devon. That's not to say that other factors weren't in play - the Labour vote getting cut, the role of Independents, votes for the Greens - but this does look like a major factor.

Devon Election Results

Some reflections yesterday's elections to Devon County Council...

On the face of it, a clear transfer of councillors from LibDem to Tory:


Caveat: These figures, taken from DCC's website, include the results of three by-elections since 2005.

These figures might lead you to a headline of "Conservatives up by 78%, LibDems down by 58%". A massive endorsement of David Cameron, you might think.

But if you look at share of the vote, rather than councillors, a different story appears:


Some observations:

1. The massive majority LibDems have enjoyed in Devon over the last four years was based on slightly fewer votes than the Conservatives received.
2. Far from a massive endorsement of Cameron, the Tory vote went up by just 4%.
3. Support for Labour halved, yet they received the same number of councillors.
4. Almost four times as many voters supported UKIP, the Greens and others as supported Labour, but their views are represented by fewer councillors than Labour.

• 2009 results
• 2005 results