Arguments, in a local context, developed  from: Thank goodness Labour’s ‘shambolic’ plan to reorganise local councils has been paused. What was it thinking? – Poly Toynbee, Guardian

“From the start, I could see no political purpose in her [Angela Rayner] launching this fiendishly complicated restructuring that has now crashed.”

Reorganisation has never been a Government objective.

Local Government Reorganisation is not in Labour’s manifesto. Neither is it a bee in Angela Rayner’s bonnet. In Polly Toynbee’s words:  “Angela did not come into government to reorganise local councils,” her people say indignantly. Her focus and purpose are fixed on housing, as the motor to drive growth.

Reorganisation was forced on Rayner. 

To quote again from Toynbee: Those closest to events have told me that the Treasury threatened to refuse funds for councils or capital for her housing targets unless she agreed to its plan. It took down a dusty 2020 PriceWaterhouseCoopers report from its shelves that purported to show that abolishing district councils and creating huge unitary authorities of up to 500,000 citizens throughout England would save money. Not very local. 

Under Andy Burnham’s determination to devolve power from Whitehall to the regions with the creation of No 10 North etc. this unaccommodating “nanny knows best” threat has surely evaporated. – Owl

Is there strong evidence of savings to be made?

As Owl has pointed out many times, district councils spend around 7% of your council tax bills. None of the services they provide, from maintaining electoral rolls and running elections to refuse collection, can be abandoned. If you can’t cut services, savings can only be made by cutting overheads. Supposing there is scope for a 10% saving in management costs. This is less than 1% of your overall council tax and somewhat insignificant in comparison to annual increases.

Toynbee: Treasury orthodoxy always thinks bigger is better and cheaper. Hampshire, with its district councils, is no better or worse run than, say, Shropshire or Buckinghamshire unitaries, Prof Tony Travers of the London School of Economics tells me. The House of Commons library finds no evidence that unitary councils save money compared with the current two-tier system.

Another aspect of this thinking is that there should be substantial reductions in councillors, increasing the separation between decision makers and the public. This is a perverse argument to make when supposedly devolving power, see below.

If there is no profit, then look at the loss.

Toynbee: Dwindling interest in community activism has led to a decrease in volunteers, members of political parties, trade unions, churches and sports clubs, those who keep society alive. So let’s not lose platoons of district councillors who help hold the social fabric together: these are people who know their communities, and whom residents know they can turn to. Experts at the Localis thinktank believe that abolishing district councils means “unsustainable workloads on remaining councillors”. 

Note under the “paused” plan, in the rural rump, whimsically called  “Devon Coast and Countryside”, only one councillor was allocated to every 3,500 electors compared to one councillor for every 2,200 in “Exeter 2028”. Moreover, all wards in Exeter would have, as now, three councillors to share their workload. Not so in the rump.

For the rump, this roughly halves the number of councillors residents have access to compared to the two tiered system.

Toynbee: A 2024 poll showed that in England people were twice as likely to trust local politicians to improve their areas as they were national politicians. There is clear evidence that councillors shore up people’s confidence in democracy.

Devolving power rather than reorganisation is now the priority

Angela Rayner: The Prime Minister is really clear that the Government’s ambition is to ensure that every area in England has, or is in the process of establishing, a strategic authority by the end of 2027, with strategic authorities in place everywhere by the end of 2028. – Statement on Local Government Reorganisation 7 September Hansard

Toynbee; Andy Burnham’s devolution of powers to mayors (or strategic authorities) across every region will move much faster if these council reorganisation plans are permanently shelved. Yes, it means that some places will have three layers of government – district, county and mayoral. But surely that is preferable to sweeping away local representation. There are worse things than having more local people getting involved as councillors, helping to run and shape their communities.

Remember Devon and Torbay have already created a non-mayoral strategic authority so the obvious next move is to progress to the next stage rather than reorganise.

Who pays for the fiasco?

Toynbee ends: Who should pay for this fiasco of a plan, and the chaos of its abrupt pause? The Treasury, who imposed it without due legal scrutiny. I trust the National Audit Office will record this classic case of Whitehall’s urge to create new organograms instead of solving practical problems on the ground. The former Tory MP Eric Pickles, who as local government secretary wielded an axe over council funding, had only one good thought: “I intend to keep a loaded pearl-handled revolver in my drawer, and the first civil servant who suggests local government reorganisation will be shot.”

Owl’s message to Devon County Council – keep the legal challenge simmering on the back burner.