A new system... but will it provide right results?

SAVINGS from the structural overhaul of local government can be overly ambitious and fail to meet expectations, one of Ulster’s leading experts on public policy has claimed.

Professor Colin Knox was speaking just weeks after Northern Ireland reduced its number of local authorities from 26 to 11, with councils also given additional powers and responsibilities.

First mooted in the early 1990s as part of a wider public sector reform agenda, the changes were again delayed by several years due to disputes as political parties bickered over proposed new borders and their electoral impact. Finally, on April 1 the new system was introduced. Once mocked as having little power beyond ‘baths, bins, births and burials’, the North’s councils now have authority over planning and neighbourhood renewal.

Still with no remit in education, social services or housing, a community planning role does though give it scope for involvement. The extension of powers to councils has also seen local government in Northern Ireland become a pawn in the quest to reach political consensus at Stormont and the return from direct rule to devolution.

Some of the more cynically minded are also of the view that much of the downwards devolution is merely Stormont offloading some of its more problematic functions to councils. But with Stormont hit with a daily fine for failing to implement welfare reforms and the budgetary impacts being passed down the chain, there is a need now for Northern Ireland’s new council structures to deliver savings now.

Professor Knox has cast doubt on whether the promised savings can be secured.

The Professor of Comparative Public Policy at the University of Ulster said: “One of the reasons for reducing the number of authorities was to reduce the staffing and administration budgets and the cost of services like waste collection.

“The problem is that often the anticipated savings are not delivered. Like many public sector reforms this may also prove to be overly ambitious in its expectation.

“It’s early days. The councils have yet to prove themselves. But they will now be held more to account for what happens at a local level. They are now key stakeholders. There has been some pain on the ground around redundancies but because the reform agenda has been heralded for many years there’s been no sharp shock and most redundancies have been voluntary.

“But most of the energies and efforts have gone into changing the structures of local government. It remains to be seen if there will be any improvement in the quality of the services they deliver.”

He added: “The council reform agenda was also held up by some controversy around the new boundaries and the need for political agreement on where those were. “We also had divisions on how many councils to go with.”

It’s early days. The councils have yet to prove themselves. But they will now be held more to account