Nick Harvey MP

BOUNDARY COMMITTEE CONSULTATION ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN DEVON

SUBMISSION FROM NICK HARVEY MP AND RICHARD YOUNGER-ROSS MP

We welcome the opportunity to respond to the Boundary Committee's consultation over its initial proposal for a unitary local authority to be formed for the existing Devon County Council area.

Our starting point in considering possible changes to local government structures in Devon is a pre-disposition in favour of unitary local government in principle. Local government has changed greatly since the 1974 reorganisation which established the current structures: county councils have much less direct involvement in running schools; districts have largely disposed of their housing stock; all councils contract out much provision of services or operate them through arms-length organisations; and councillors have - for better or worse - delegated much of their discretion in the field of planning to council officers.

So we understand and appreciate an argument that maintaining two principal local authorities to operate each citizen's local services has become cumbersome and expensive; that duplication could be avoided by moving to unitary structures; that public confusion could be reduced and accountability increased if each person had just one council to turn to on all issues. Equally we see that district councils, while performing significant roles in spatial planning and regeneration and in securing affordable housing, do so with very meagre financial resources. This can leave them in a weak position in dealing with determined large developers, whereas bringing some of the county council's financial muscle into the equation might even up the score a bit; and - as another example - pooling county and district land holdings might increase public sector leverage and leadership in the economic development area.

We would both, however, have preferred to see the full county of Devon divided into four unitary authorities: Plymouth and its travel-to-work hinterland; Torbay and south Devon; Exeter and east Devon; and Barnstaple and northern Devon. This would have reflected more accurately the economic, geographic, social, political and cultural dividing lines within the county.

The Boundary Committee has opted instead to recommend a single unitary authority for the existing county council area and is soliciting opinions on that. (We dismiss the variant proposal, of a separate unitary authority for Exeter and Exmouth, as ludicrous. To maintain a huge rural county authority, but with its central focal point ripped out, would be the worst of all worlds.)

Our overriding concern about the proposed Devon unitary authority is its sheer immensity, both in terms of geography and size of population. Covering eight districts and roughly eight Parliamentary constituencies, alarm bells instantly ring about its ability to deliver high quality services across such terrain within any acceptable framework of effective democratic accountability. We note that even remote and impersonal London Boroughs only get to about half that size in population, and that the proposed council will cover a geographical area far bigger than Greater London, let alone one of its component boroughs.

So we have grave reservations about the proposed authority's potential accountability to the scattered communities and citizens of Devon which it would serve. The number of principal local authority councillors is likely to be reduced by 75% or more, which will hardly help. There is no realistic possibility of resources being pooled to give the new council salaried full-time Members with professional offices to support them like MPs, MEPs, MSPs, Peers or Welsh Assembly representatives. Democracy is expected to come on the cheap. Executive councillors and Director-level officials will also be located at a far greater distance from the communities of Devon than existing district leaders, whose functions would be absorbed into the new entity.

There is a real risk of power being very remote from the people! We appreciate that the Boundary Committee in its report and the existing Devon County Council in its proposals have both recognised this potential "democratic deficit". But we greatly regret that we have not as yet heard any convincing proposal as to how this challenge might be overcome, and that is our reason for submitting this response to the consultation.

For the proposed Devon unitary council to stand any prospect of overcoming this democratic deficit and of being truly accountable to its citizens and communities, a radical and convincing model of devolving decision-making powers to credibly scaled Area Boards would be an absolute requirement. No such proposal has even been hinted at by Devon County Council. Instead they offer a hopelessly insubstantial, albeit quite novel, suggestion of forming 28 community boards.

This idea is in itself unconvincing but unobjectionable: these boards might serve some limited purpose in gauging opinions in the parishes and providing some feedback to policy makers and service providers. The miniscule budgets at their disposal (if 28 of them each has £200,000 then the total spend will only be around one third of one per cent of the council's budget) might help pump prime some modest community initiatives. However, nobody in their right mind would divide service delivery for the new council into 28 geographical units, so they will have no meaningful control or decision-making over policies or services. In practice their mixed membership will mean that their principal role will be as "talking shops". This is itself can be useful, but in our opinion the Community Boards can make no significant contribution to addressing the democratic deficit at the heart of the current proposal.

Meaningful devolution of power must be to units large enough to have councillors making policy and officers managing service delivery. Clearly the existing staffs of the eight districts and many existing county staff are not all going to be relocated in County Hall, and therefore localised management structures will have to exist. It is essential to good governance and democratic accountability that local managers should be accountable to local councillors, and that in so huge a local authority the maximum amount of power and discretion should be devolved to the officers and members in each Area.

No Area Board should be greatly larger or be perceived to "punch more weight" than the others, and the structure should conform comfortably with the legislative requirement that none represents more than 40% of the whole. We believe that there should be four powerful Area Boards. These should follow broadly but not slavishly the existing district boundaries, combining Mid and East Devon; North Devon and Torridge; Teignbridge, South Hams and most of West Devon; with Exeter - importantly - having its own. The absence of this essential tier is the fatal flaw in the current plan.

Looking at the combined functions for which a unitary authority will be responsible, it is clear that the actual powers vested at this Area Board level would be a variable blend of policy setting, budgeting and decision making in some instances; and scrutinising and holding to account the central authority (and other bodies like a Care Trust or Children's Trust) in other instances.

Decisions about Area Boards' sub-committee structures cannot be anticipated at this stage, but we could imagine them having a committee for each service area which a unitary authority would operate, with senior area managers responsible to each such committee for each such service:

• Combined environmental responsibilities of districts and county
• Economic development, place-shaping and regeneration
• Culture, recreation and sports - including decisions about their local economic priority
• Housing, community development and safety, and public spaces
• Planning
• Licensing
• Highways, public transport and parking
• Adult and Community Services
• Children's and Family Services, and education

If a new unitary authority came into being but did not set up something along these lines, then Devon would witness a grotesque centralisation into Exeter of powers currently exercised around the county. By contrast, a structure along these lines could potentially draw out of Exeter for the first time meaningful scrutiny - and even some devolved decision making - over current county council functions, and arguably amount to an enhancement of democratic accountability.

We greatly regret the absence from Devon County Council's proposals for a new unitary authority of any meaningful suggestions along the lines we have sketched. We note from informal discussion their belief that these ideas are unacceptable because they would cost more money than their centralised model, and thus reduce or delay the overall savings to be made.

We do not accept that an authority with a meaningful devolved tier of governance would be prevented from making savings. A central back office function covering finance, personnel and payroll, legal services, revenue collection and a variety of support functions could be created just as planned. Overall strategy setting and planning would bring its own efficiencies just as intended. And in any event, moving from eight autonomous districts each with its own chief executive, directors, headquarters, committee and portfolio holders, to just four Area Boards each with a team of area managers (most of which will have to exist anyway - it is just a question of to whom they are accountable) would leave the lion's share of the savings intact. In fact, if most councillors spent most of their time on area committees nearer to home rather than on central committees in Exeter, it is hard to see why a devolved structure should cost very much more at all.

Indeed, a financial objection to ensuring meaningful democratic accountability should not be entertained very far. Clearly the cheapest options might be to do away with councillors altogether and leave everything to officers, or indeed do away with local government and leave everything to Whitehall. But such ideas are unacceptable, because they are undemocratic and insufficiently local. We believe that the same logic makes the existing proposal - as currently conceived - unacceptable.

We note that neither the Boundary Committee, nor probably the Secretary of State, and not even the implementation board which would make initial decisions about a new authority prior to its birth, is in any position to ensure that devolved structures will be established. The body of members voted in at the first election will make the real decisions, and we hear anecdotally from elsewhere that some have declined to proceed with assurances given earlier.

To minimise the risk of the same happening in Devon, we would like to see a cross-party assurance that a substantial devolved tier of governance will be established, signed by existing Devon county council leaders, preferably negotiated with the cross-party leaders of Devon's district councils, issued publicly to the people of Devon and submitted to the Secretary of State prior to a final decision being made or any Order laid in Parliament.

Unless and until such solemn undertakings are made, we do not believe that the proposal for a single unitary authority for the Devon County Council area can be supported.