Julian Brazil, the Liberal Democrat leader of Devon county council, said the proposals preferred by Labour were the “archetypal gerrymander”, adding: “They are trying to expand Labour cities as big as they can get in order to maintain some kind of control.”
Labour ‘jeopardising social care by ripping up councils’
Max Kendix www.thetimes.com
In a letter to Sir Keir Starmer, local authority leaders say the proposed boundary changes are politically driven and will cost money rather than save it
Labour is ripping up local government for “politically driven” reasons, putting social care in jeopardy and costing taxpayers as much as £1 billion extra, a majority of affected council leaders have claimed.
The government is scrapping county and district councils across England to create as many as 60 new local authorities in an effort to “simplify” local government.
However, council leaders have warned that the way Labour has chosen to move forward with the break-ups will create significant extra costs.
Ministers had committed to the new councils having at least 500,000 residents, but are now prioritising expanding city boundaries and opting for smaller council populations.
In a letter to Sir Keir Starmer, 19 council leaders accused the prime minister of “short-term political choices” concerning the proposed boundaries, which are preferred by mostly urban Labour MPs. Ministers are facing legal challenges to the process, which risks delaying the changes.
The council leaders, a mixture of Reform, Conservative and Liberal Democrat, argue that the moves will “jeopardise the integrity of essential services, particularly adult and children’s social care”.
Analysis commissioned by the County Councils Network suggests that there would be “no long-term efficiency savings” from the smaller council sizes. The government had cited the same organisation’s analysis to argue that its reorganisation drive would result in savings.
Julian Brazil, the Liberal Democrat leader of Devon county council, said the proposals preferred by Labour were the “archetypal gerrymander”, adding: “They are trying to expand Labour cities as big as they can get in order to maintain some kind of control.”
Stephen Atkinson, the Reform leader of Lancashire county council, said Labour’s preferred option for splitting up the area would cost £90 million with little reward.
“People will fall between the gaps and there’ll be serious consequences for those people and the care they receive and the support they receive,” he said. “The government is in a bunker. It sees any conversation around their policies as a political attack, instead of seeing it as the sector being concerned.
“Local government reorganisation is a disaster waiting to happen unless the government starts to recognise the complexity, the challenge and the vulnerability involved in this process.”
The letter from councils says that “the government must now seriously engage the sector on the integrity of the decision-making process, alongside the feasibility of delivery within the government’s self-imposed timescales [of reorganising everywhere by 2028]”.
It adds: “Proceeding with further decisions at pace, and on the basis of an approach that is increasingly perceived as inconsistent and politically driven, risks embedding significant long-term consequences.”
The leaders argue that a potential Labour leadership race means the rush to make decisions about reorganisation is less justified.
A government spokesman said: “We don’t recognise these figures. In fact, local government reorganisation will save taxpayers’ money by streamlining services and boosting regional growth so we can put more cash in peoples’ pockets.
“Our plans will make public services like social care work better for local people, alongside speeding up the construction of vital new homes and infrastructure.”
Background
Three quarters of county councils in line to be reorganised have signed a letter to the Prime Minister, arguing the government’s approach to reorganisation now poses a ‘direct threat to the most vulnerable’ and the sustainability of new councils.
In March, the government announced its decision to reorganise councils in Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and Hampshire, abolishing both county and district councils in those areas and replacing them with unitary councils.
Despite setting out a statutory criteria for decisions at the onset of the programme, including a principle to create new unitaries covering populations of over 500,000 and avoiding the unnecessary fragmentation of care services, the letter argues that the decisions are at odds with the guidance: splitting those counties into multiple smaller unitary councils in each location.
The March decisions will create 15 new unitary councils in just four counties. In Suffolk and Norfolk the county council put forward a proposal for a single county in each area, whereas in Essex and Hampshire the county councils proposed three unitaries for each county. In all four counties, the government took the most radical proposals to create three unitaries in each of Suffolk and Norfolk, four in Hampshire and five in Essex. In three of the four areas, complex changes to existing boundaries are required.
Government will decide on the number of unitary councils in the remaining 16 counties later this summer. Ahead of those decisions, the County Councils Network (CCN) has written to the Prime Minister warning ‘if this pattern of large-scale fragmentation and complex boundary change, at odds with the government criteria, is repeated, this will create a pattern of reform that is more costly, less stable and less effective than the current two-tier System’.
The letter was endorsed by cross party members of CCN’s management committee. All county councils and the CCN unitary member, North Lincolnshire, impacted by the March decisions and those due be decided on in July, were invited to sign the letter based on their local circumstances. In total, 16 out of those councils signed the letter.
The councils argue that the creation of smaller, fragmented unitary authorities will increase severe financial pressures, jeopardise the delivery of essential adult and children’s services and require ‘hundreds of millions of central government funding to support transition’. As a result, they warn that some services may not be functioning on day one of these new councils coming into inception in April 2028.
East Devon Watch 