councillor

Go Back to Committees – and Use All the Talent of Elected Councillors

/ inlogov / 3 Comments

Andrew Coulson

A recent centre spread in the LGC has the headline “Committee System may be Outdated, Councils Warned”, even though the option to return to government by committees is one of the main planks of the Localism Act and a central plank of Conservative and especially LibDem policy.

The research reported on, by Ed Hammond of the Centre for Public Scrutiny, reports that four councils are expected to make the change in May 2012.  There will also be some “hybrid” arrangements, such as that likely to come into effect in Kent, where advisory committees are given greatly strengthened powers, even though technically decisions will remain in the hands of individual cabinet members, and the cabinet, though that is not expected to meet very often.

Up to 40 councils are believed to be giving serious consideration to making the change, including some of those where there will be mayoral referenda on 3 May.  If those referenda are lost, some of these councils may well revert to committee governance in May 2013.

Why?  Because, as they see it, committees are much more inclusive than any other form of governance. They give a voice to all the elected councillors, and potentially bring to the table all their talents. They make it harder to take decisions in secret. They give councillors a means of putting into effect the commitments they make when they stand for election, and they keep council officers on their toes because they can never be quite sure what will happen when they attend a committee – even if most of the major changes that might be made to a report will have been agreed in the group meeting of a majority party beforehand.  They also allow backbench councillors to specialise, and provide a means to induct them into how council services are run. They develop leadership – many strong leaders emerged over the years from the committee system.

This is not to say that committees were perfect or are inevitably the best solution. They can, and often were, criticised – for being slow to make decisions, leaving it unclear who was responsible for decisions, and for sustaining silos (such as Education authorities) which at times seemed to have little involvement with other parts of the council.  The criticisms can be answered. The committee system can be fast, and keep confidences, when it matters. With a cabinet, or indeed an elected mayor, leadership is still distributed – with chief executives or chief officers often the real leaders. Silos can be broken down if there is the political will to do so. But none of this is easy, and there were plenty of disillusioned and frustrated councillors and officers in the past. All we can say with confidence is that no system is perfect and that each council needs to work out what is best for its own purposes.

There are different forms of committee systems, ranging from a single committee with important decisions taken in full council (as in a number of the present Fourth Option councils, with populations less than 85,000, who have never given up their committees) to the massively complex structures in some counties and metropolitan districts before 2000 which had committees or sub-committees for almost everything that a councillor could become involved in – over 50 in total in one case. No-one is proposing to go back to that.

There have to be means of dealing with cross-cutting issues, urgent business between meetings, the size of committees and sub-committees, how often they meet, systems of councillors’ allowances, and policy review, to take but some of the issues of detail that must be addressed. Scrutiny will for most councils remain a function that needs to be done, and there are different ways of integrating it into a committee system. Maybe there is much to be said for not rushing into making the changes, and learning from what is happening now.

A day workshop at INLOGOV on 6 July will present a balanced picture and facilitate a discussion of the pros and cons of making the change and the detail issues that need to be taken into account in any new constitution.  Several of the councils making the change will be represented or make presentations. Ed Hammond, the researcher who wrote the Centre for Public Scrutiny report, will speak.  There will be comment from the Local Government Association, and support from FOSIG, the group that represents fourth option councils.

It will provide a unique opportunity to listen to the enthusiasts for making a change, and cross question them, and to understand the alternatives, and the possible downsides,  and the need to address the detail.  More about this workshop, including a booking form, can be found by clicking here.

Dr. Andrew Coulson is Lead Consultant on Overview and Scrutiny at INLOGOV,University of Birmingham, with wide experience of Overview and Scrutiny.  He has recently launched one of the first assessed qualifications on the subject.  His further research interests include partnerships and governance, economic and environmental strategies, and local government in Central and Eastern Europe.

Standards Codes: A Case of Motherhood and Apple Pie

/ inlogov / Leave a comment

Philip Whiteman

Whilst giving a lecture to a group of councillors at a summer school last year, I explained how the Localism Bill could result in some authorities abandoning their codes of conduct for reasons of despair with the standards regime.  The response from councillors was enthusiastic and comments included ‘expensive, time consuming and irrelevant’.  Some predictably expressed the view that the ultimate judgement of what constituted poor behaviour would be subject to the ballot box.

Walk on stage, Baron Bichard of Nailsworth who took a very different view when introducing an amendment to the Bill in order to save the code.

“At a time when the public’s trust in politicians is at a low ebb, it is important that all public bodies have explicit standards of conduct, which make transparent how they will carry out their business and provide benchmarks against which they can be held to account.”

Bichard’s intervention and proposal was timely albeit rather late during the Bill’s progress through Parliament.  Without his amendment, local government would have made a backward step of forty years.  Quite why the government objected to the code is unclear but they clearly had a very short memory span.   The code was introduced following the Poulson corruption scandal of the early 1970s and eventually became a statutory requirement. It is true that the code did not rule out further scandals whether they be Donnygate, Shirley Porter orWalsall, but it has given existing councillors a handle on what is acceptable or unacceptable behaviour – a situation further reinforced through the standards regime and most recently, the inclusion of the Nolan Principles into statute.

The Act is quite original in that it is probably the first piece of legislation that lists the Nolan principles, which must be adopted by each authority. However, the rest of the code has to be determined by each authority in the spirit of localism.  This is particularly problematic for authorities not willing to ever make a decision without receiving central government guidance, many of whom will have been waiting for some months by now.

So, from stage left and four months after the Act becoming statute, welcome the Local Government Association and Department for Communities and Local Government along with their new illustrative codes of conduct. Both of their anticipated documents arrived during April and within a week of each other.  This may be coincidental but it did rather resemble a rather unsightly race of one-upmanship or desperation between the two institutions.

Unfortunately, neither code is likely to generate much excitement and seem to be rather ‘motherhood and apple pie’ and lacking in substance – probably a result of disagreement and a rush to publish.

When comparing both documents, one could easily question whether the institutions are addressing the same legislation.  Just taking three examples:

  • CLG’s illustrative code fails to list the Nolan principles (remember that was a requirement under the Act).
  • The LGA acknowledges that others should be treated with respect but the CLG code does not.
  • CLG incorporates narrative on the new Disclosable Pecuniary Interest – but this totally ignored within by the LGA

And the list could go on.

Monitoring Officers and their councillors have gained a tremendous experience over the past few years from the work in developing standards codes.  They will know what works and what does not.  True, existing codes will need to change and reflect the legislative requirements but my recommendation is that they reconsider the own existing codes rather than unquestioningly adopt the vagaries of either the CLG or LGA models.

Returning to my discussion with the group of councillors and their opposition to codes of conduct.   When challenged on how they would determine a breach of standards and how they would tackle an errant councillor, there was quick realisation that a code of conduct provides an essential framework for assessing poor standards and breaches of acceptable behaviour.  Unfortunately, I think those councillors will be sorely disappointed with the LGA or CLG examples.

Philip Whiteman is a Lecturer at the Institute of Local Government Studies.  He has research interests in the impact of central government and regulators on the role, service delivery and performance of local government and other local bodies.  He is currently looking at developing a case for researching how guidance is an important instrument for steering local government over and above legislative instruments.  He is also Editor of the journal Local Government Studies.

If Ministers want us to vote for mayors, why make it so hard?

/ inlogov / Leave a comment

Chris Game

Even allowing for all the undecideds and the “ooh-I’ve-not-heard-anything-about-it”s, opinion polls suggest that several, perhaps even most, of the ten referendums on May 3rd could produce Yes majorities for elected mayors. None suggest, though, that there isn’t everything still to play for. Why, then, are Government Ministers, who claim to want this potentially momentous change, making life so difficult for the Yes campaigners?

Two issues come up at every mayoral meeting: What additional ‘hard’ powers would a mayor in my city have? and How do we kick out one who’s no good? With the Localism Act offering little help, and Ministers even less, this blog attempts to provide some at least partial answers.

Powers were intended to be easy. In the original Bill, undefined additional powers – transferred ‘local public service functions’ – would go to mayoral authorities only. They were the bribe to get us to vote for the mayors that only false consciousness had prevented us realising we really wanted all along.

But the Lords crucially amended this bit of the Bill, enabling functions to be transferred to any ‘permitted authority’, provided the transfer “would promote economic development … or increase local accountability”.  The mayoral bribe had gone – replaced only by a thinly disguised code.

December’s Cabinet Office prospectus, Unlocking Growth in Cities, stated that cities wanting significant new powers and funding would “need to demonstrate strong, visible and accountable leadership and effective decision-making structures” –universally interpreted as having an elected mayor.

This document launched the Government’s policy of ‘City Deals’ – bespoke packages of new powers, projects and funding sources, negotiated with the leaders of individual cities, in exchange for an agreement to work with the Government, the private sector and other agencies to unlock these cities’ “full growth potential”.

It sounds encouragingly localist – until you realise the Catch-22.  Ministers want to negotiate individual city deals with elected mayors; they can’t say what any specific deal will comprise without knowing who they’ll be negotiating with; but voters, unless they know the likely content of their deal, are much less likely to opt for mayors.

Though inconvenient, this logic might just be acceptable, had Ministers themselves not completely ignored it in publicising early deals with one city still to elect a mayor and another outspokenly opposed to the whole idea.

Ministers could yet decide, as was hinted at before the Budget, to reveal some meaningful detail about the discussions already held with the leaderships of other referendum cities, but it now seems unlikely.  Yes campaigners, therefore, must make the most of the Liverpool and Greater Manchester deals that we do know about – by no means, as it turns out, too discouraging a task.

Liverpool’s city deal was announced on February 7th – the same day as the Labour Council, bypassing its electorate, took the decision itself to have an elected mayor who, once elected on May 3rd, would lead its implementation.

All involved insisted, however, that the deal was not dependent on the city having a mayor – which means that any city whose electors have actually voted for a mayor will surely expect to negotiate a deal worth proportionately at least as much as Liverpool’s.

Liverpool Council’s website headlines the deal’s additional economic development money as initially £130 million – “including £75 million of new money from government” – with the potential to grow to between £500 million and £1 billion.

Other goodies include: an Environmental Technology Zone, with the resulting growth in business rate income going to the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and five Mayoral Development Zones; a Mayoral Investment Board to oversee the city’s economic and housing strategy; and a Secondary School Investment Plan to build 12 new secondary schools.

Sceptics will, entirely reasonably, note the big questions here barely even addressed. How much of all of this is genuinely new money, as opposed to money that would have come to Liverpool anyway from existing or abolished funding sources?  How much of this city deal has to be shared with the city-region LEP? How much freedom of action will the Mayor have to do things that Ministers don’t like? And, of course, the perennial question of additional revenue-raising, as opposed to capital-raising, powers.

However, even to Kenny Dalglish and Liverpool FC, £500 million-plus is hardly loose change. Moreover, most of what relatively little criticism there has been of the package came, significantly, only after the announcement of Greater Manchester’s deal, whose ‘earn back’ tax provision – the first allowing local government to take directly a slice of national taxes – was rightly acknowledged as a genuinely ground-breaking policy innovation.

Importantly, Manchester’s is not a deal with the City Council, but with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) – the strategic authority for all ten Manchester boroughs, whose statutory city region status is clearly accepted by Ministers as having at least the strength and accountability of a city mayor.

Under the deal the GMCA will invest £1.2 billion in infrastructure to promote economic growth, and – the headline bit – will be able to earn back up to £30 million of the extra growth-generated tax revenues to reinvest in a revolving infrastructure fund, in which the money is returned on a payment-by-results basis.

The whole deal aims to create and protect a total of over 6,000 jobs, with other provisions – including devolution of the Northern Rail franchise, 6,000 more apprenticeships, a low carbon hub, and up to 7,000 new homes through a Housing Investment Board – detailed on the DCLG website.

Its total potential impact on the city and regional economy is huge, and, exceptional as the GMCA may be, this publicised deal has to be seen as a massive precedent, and, surely, a major addition to the Yes campaigners’ armoury.

Removal of mayors should also have been settled by now. In its Impact Assessment in January 2011, the Government asserted (p.9) that, if mayors were going to exercise additional powers and freedoms, the accountability regime should include a recall mechanism – to be introduced “at a later date … having considered the issue alongside proposals for recall for other public officials.”

It would have been useful had Ministers reminded voters of this pledge and given some vague hint of when the “later date” might arrive. Still, it remains Government policy, and the answer, therefore, to the question: “If we’re going to directly elect a mayor, how can we directly unelect a rubbish one?” is that, by the time the possibility arises, some recall mechanism should, as promised, be in place.

But what kind of mechanism?  The Warwick Commission Report on Elected Mayors seems to suggest that “an appropriate recall process”, enabling the removal of a mayor “in extremis”, might be one exercised through a no confidence vote by the full council (pp. 10,34). Which is not dissimilar to the Government’s current attempt to introduce a recall mechanism for MPs, controlled by other MPs, rather than by voters – and rapidly unravelling as a consequence, which probably explains why Ministers are keeping so stum about recall for mayors.

In what is supposed to be a major extension of direct democracy, “an appropriate recall process” would seem logically to be one in which voters are the key players. A set percentage of a disgruntled electorate sign a petition, and thereby trigger a recall vote in which those same electors are asked if they want their mayor to be recalled, with a Yes vote triggering in turn a by-election.

Finally, there is the in extremis issue. The Recall of Elected Representatives Bill – the one introduced, regrettably, not by the Government, but as a Private Member’s Bill by Conservative MP, Zac Goldsmith – proposes that recall should kick into action not in extremis, but in any circumstances in which representatives lose the confidence of their electorate: if, say, they’ve acted financially dishonestly or disreputably, intentionally misled the body to which they’ve been elected, broken promises made in an election address, or behaved in a way likely to bring their office into disrepute (Clause 1(2b).

It’s almost certainly not what Ministers have in mind, but I bet it wouldn’t half boost the Yes vote on May 3rd and maybe even the turnout.

Chris is a Visiting Lecturer at INLOGOV interested in the politics of local government; local elections, electoral reform and other electoral behaviour; party politics; political  leadership and management; member-officer relations; central-local relations; use of consumer and opinion research in local government; the modernisation agenda and the implementation of executive local government.

Returning to the Back Benches

/ inlogov / Leave a comment

Councillor David Smith

After eleven years as leader of Lichfield District Council it was with some feelings of uncertainty that I embarked on my role as a back bencher.  As Leader I had reluctantly been obliged to introduce the system of cabinet with overview and scrutiny panels and I still hold the view that this system moves members from community activists to being disenfranchised observers.

It is therefore interesting to see that as part of the Localism Act councils are now starting changes to new forms of delivery that, far from going back to the old slow and cumbersome committee system, are developing new approaches based on cabinet committees.

I understand that Kent County Council are amongst the trail blazers out of the large authorities but I am told talking to the leader of Tandridge District Council, which was not required to change to the cabinet system, that they have themselves developed a highly successful Leader and committee system that I would commend, certainly to districts.

It may be said that idle hands are a source for trouble but with the massive talent that we have amongst our councillors they are surely wasted in overviewing the decisions of others. It can also be said that councillors are probably closest to the ground roots of our communities and in their new changed role from community representative to community leader they can now respond to that challenge.

The Localism Act has essentially changed the way we do business.  Councils like to be told what to do by national Government so that it gives them something to push against.  By removing these constraints members can look again at what drove them to become councillors and how they wish to develop their changed role. Developing the LDF in many councils is going to present a major challenge that will push the back bench leadership role to its limits. The balance between the “needs analysis” of what a council will need to deliver and the “not in my back yard” situation will cause significant stresses.

All councillors must also come to terms with the need to actively participate in the planning system, no one will be able to say  “I don’t do planning.”  The need for all members to fully understand and be involved in early planning discussions on major applications is new territory for both members and  officers and in some cases opens the door of the planning department to what has been seen in the past as a forbidden area.

Indeed in some councils (not Lichfield) I was amazed to discover that planning officers were barred from speaking to members about applications.  I am sure the Localism Act will develop a new openness that will bring about a refreshing change to many areas within our councils.

Since giving up my role as Leader I have completely refreshed the relationship I have with my electorate.    My rolling case load of around eight has not changed but I now am able to spend more time in the local community.

The Localism Act gave me the opportunity to work with residents to prepare a 10 year strategy for the village I represent and on the advice of Greg Clark we submitted it for Government funding.  No one was more surprised than me to find we have been granted £20,000 to progress the plan.

Back in June of last year we developed a wish list for our community that developed into ten challenges and from this a group of 17 residents came together to develop the plan.

In November we submitted our plan to CLG as a front runner and also took it to our second village meeting.  I don’t know whether it’s just village communities or if we are something special, but each of our public meetings have packed the village hall with over 100 residents and with a total of 1,200 electorate we consider that there is a mandate for us to follow.

Amongst the nationwide applications for funding I am not sure that many came from community led groups, but I would commend any member to look at what they can achieve by a strategy that involves the entire community.  Surprisingly, for a village that sits in a vulnerable Green Belt location where no new development is proposed, the plan recognises the need to address the requirement for affordable homes and some sheltered accommodation.  Transport, highways, a new tree lined Jubilee Walk, a low carbon plan and a wish to find sites for 1,200 trees are all part of the challenges.

So my advice to members is to look at your new role, role up your sleeves and get stuck in.  It’s great fun and very rewarding.

Cllr David Smith is the former Leader of Lichfield District Council and plays an active and influential role in Local Government policy making and implementation at a national level.  David is the Chairman of the Local Government Research Partnership and has sat on the Local Government Association Environment and Housing Board.  In addition, he has joined the practitioner board of INLOGOV at the University of Birmingham.

Huge Whitehall battle over mayoral powers, reveals Heseltine

/ inlogov / Leave a comment

There was no camouflage flak jacket, no ceremonial mace to brandish, no Downing Street front door through which theatrically to exit a ministerial career, but who needs props, if, like Michael (now Lord) Heseltine, you’re one of the great headline-makers of your political generation. He managed it again at last week’s University of Birmingham Mayoral Debate, and against the odds.

For a start, the event seemed set up more as a rally than a debate – bringing together “leaders and representatives from business, education, politics, and the community, to discuss the benefits that an elected mayor could bring to Birmingham”.  Once Catherine Staite had set the scene and identified some of the key arguments , the views of the remaining speakers – Lords Heseltine and Adonis, and CBI Regional Director, Richard Butler, a late replacement for Petra Roth, elected mayor of Frankfurt, one of Birmingham’s partner cities – ranged, though not in order of speaker, from enthusiasm to evangelism.

Mayor Roth’s absence was unfortunate.  By comparing her own experience – Mayor since 1995, and previously a member of the Hesse Land (state) parliament – with the varying powers and responsibilities, terms of office, election and recall provisions of Germany’s other major city mayors, she could have broadened the discussion and maybe even provided a headline or two. Instead, Patrick Wintour, Political Editor of The Guardian and Chair of the debate, looked to and was well served by Lord Heseltine, British politics’ answer to Sunset Boulevard’s retired silent-film star, Norma Desmond: “I’m still big; it’s the stages that got smaller”.

The prompt was a question from Councillor Sir Albert Bore, former Leader of Birmingham City Council, Leader of its now minority Labour Group, but here a mere member of the audience.  One of Labour’s earliest and strongest mayoral supporters and an aspiring future candidate, Councillor Bore asked when Ministers were going to indicate explicitly the additional powers that could be transferred to cities voting for elected mayors in the May referendums: “The Government should come clean about what powers are on offer [to mayoral cites]. If they are no more than to a current council leader, they risk losing the referendums to a No vote”.

There was no imperative for Lord Heseltine to say anything of substance. He could have treated the question as rhetorical, or left it to the other panellists – but, of course, he couldn’t resist. He couldn’t, he confided conspiratorially, reveal too much, and indeed he didn’t. He said enough, though, to give Patrick Wintour his headline: “Whitehall battling to avoid losing power to mayors, says Heseltine” .

There was a “huge battle” among Ministers, Heseltine intimated, over how much extra power should be granted to elected mayors across almost all relevant functions: money raising, transport, welfare, strategic planning, and economic policy. Some ministers – and no doubt their civil servants – aren’t keen on transferring anything of significance. The Lib Dems further complicate an already dual-track policy deriving from different sections of the Localism Act. Pro-decentralisation, but anti-mayors, they want devolved powers for any city able to make a case, regardless of its form of governance. Cameron, according to Andrew Rawnsley in Sunday’s Observer, doesn’t want anything too radical, that could be attacked as yet another U-turn.  Oh yes, and the theoretical enforcer, Greg Clark, Minister for Decentralisation and Cities – responsible for the ‘City Deals’ policy that is the chief source of grief for Councillor Bore and other mayoralists – isn’t even able to punch the weight of a full Cabinet member, let alone take on the PM.

City Deals were introduced in last December’s Cabinet Office prospectus, Unlocking Growth in Cities – . The Government would work with individual cities to achieve a series of genuine two-way negotiated agreements that would enable cities to do things their way. The prospectus accordingly set out an “illustrative menu of bold options” (pp.8-9) that Ministers would be willing to discuss as part of the deal-making process – greater freedoms to invest in growth, the power to drive infrastructure development, new tools to help people acquire skills and jobs. In return, where cities wished to take on significant new powers and funding, “they will need to demonstrate strong, visible and accountable leadership and effective decision-making structures” (p.2 – emphasis added) – this last clause being universally understood as code for having an elected mayor.

In addition, “other than as part of a city deal negotiation, the Government does not intend to reach any view about specific powers that might be devolved.” (para.10 – emphasis again added)

The logic is sound, and the localist intent probably sincere. A mayoral system and the mayor (or leader) personally will determine the details of any city deal; the system will be determined by the referendum; so the content of the eventual deal cannot be known, let alone announced, before the referendum. Councillor Bore’s point, however, is equally irrefutable: without knowledge of the nature of the deal, voters may lack the incentive to vote for a mayoral system in the first place.

So is there a way out of this closed circle, or ways of signalling to voters the kinds of powers an elected mayor could bring to their city? Perhaps. First, Whitehall hostilities notwithstanding, the Government could do – maybe in the March 21st Spring Budget – what many were hoping for in its January response to its mayoral consultation, What can a mayor do for your city?, and give some indication of what mayoral cities specifically might expect from its “illustrative menu” of city deal options.

Though not comprehensive – with no mention of additional sources of revenue funding, or of police and fire services, for example – it was a wide-ranging list, much too lengthy to be reproduced here. However, it included: a single consolidated capital pot, rather than multiple funding streams; access to an additional £1 billion Regional Growth Fund; new infrastructure funding through Tax Increment Financing; devolution of local transport major funding and responsibility for commissioning rail services; devolution of Homes & Communities Agency spending and functions; and the creation of City Apprenticeship Hubs and a City Skills Fund, enabling adult skills to be tailored to the needs of employers.

No matter how enticing the list, though, it doesn’t in itself answer Councillor Bore’s question. The closest we can get to that is the one mayoral city deal that has been negotiated and publicised so far – with Liverpool. The Labour Council are bypassing the referendum process and moving straight to the election of a mayor in May, and have negotiated a deal that the Leader, Joe Anderson, hitherto a critic of a purely city mayor, feels is something both to shout about and campaign on.

The key elements of the Liverpool deal comprise:

  • A new Environmental Technology Zone, with the resulting growth in business rate income going to the LEP and five priority economic development areas (Mayoral Development Zones), and the Government prepared to add a further £75 million for economic development backed by a strong business case;
  • A Mayoral Investment Board to oversee the city’s economic and housing strategy, pooling Home & Communities Agency and other local land assets to drive economic growth;
  • Welfare Pilots, developed in collaboration with the Department for Work & Pensions, to deliver a programme of support for young people leaving the Work Programme, and a ‘Youth Contract’ pathfinder;
  • A Secondary School Investment Plan to build 12 new secondary schools, to help support the local economy and skills agenda.

The total package, according to the Council’s report, could bring the city close to £1 billion.  Multiplying up for Birmingham, with more than double Liverpool’s population, gives a number that will surely strike most people as rather more than “a few crumbs from the Westminster table” – to quote Lord Digby Jones’ recent dismissal of the value of a city mayor (Birmingham Post, March 1). Obviously, it would help mayoral campaigners and voters alike, if Ministers were prepared to support the policy they are pushing on cities with something more explicit and authoritative, but even now we have a lot more material to work with than just a few months ago.  

 

Chris Game

Chris is a Visiting Lecturer at INLOGOV interested in the politics of local government; local elections, electoral reform and electoral behaviour; party politics; political leadership and management; member-officer relations; central-local relations; use of consumer and opinion research in local government; the modernisation agenda and the implementation of executive local government.