‘Local government has no choice but to change’
LOCAL authorities in Wales have a stark choice of either driving and leading reform and change or being shaped by it, believes Alun Davies, Welsh Government Cabinet Secretary for Local Government and Public Services.
And he said the real danger facing local government today “isn’t a minster with a map, but local government without an alternative”.
The deadline for responses to his consultative green paper Strengthening Local Government: Delivering for People passed yesterday. In it, local authorities were also invited to outline new powers they would like to have – potentially in areas like retaining business rates and use of general power of competence which could, for example, see them investing in commercial property schemes, as in England.
But although Mr Davies insists mergers are only a means to an end, he said maintaining the current number of 22 against a backdrop of challenging finances with no future respite, was unsustainable. An indicative map in the consultation reduces the current number of 22 to just 10, through the merger of neighbouring authorities.
He stressed that as part of a wider discussion on the future of public services in Wales, he wanted to see a more collaborative and less complicated delivery approach, which could mean less power centralised in Cardiff Bay and more resources allocated for frontline services at a local level.
The Welsh Government proposed three options in the green paper – allowing authorities to merge voluntarily; a phased approach that would allow early adopters to merge in 2022, with others doing so by 2026; or a single merger programme in 2022.
However, in a response which many local authorities have backed, the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) said it is not prepared to engage in discussions over mergers and that creating larger councils would not address the biggest issue facing the sector – namely austerity and increasing demand for services such as social care, where costs are running far higher than the rate of inflation.
Local government still employs 130,000 people in Wales, despite that being cut by 20,000 in the past five years
While Mr Davies insists he has ruled nothing in or out, his intervention is the latest in a series of Welsh Government attempts to create a more streamlined local government map in Wales, from the Williams Commission to the ultimately failed approach of former minister Leighton Andrews. The last and more conciliatory approach by Mark Drakeford again resulted in no change, but instead brought a commitment from local authorities to explore more collaboration at a regional level – particularly around the evolving city regions for the Swansea Bay and Cardiff Capital Region, where some see the inevitable establishment of regionalised strategies in areas such as planning, transport and economic development.
Speaking in his office at Ty Hywel in Cardiff Bay, Tregedar-born Mr Davies said: “There is nobody today in local government who is happy as to where we are. Everybody feels there are enormous stresses and strains on the system. I hear people saying all we need is more money when no money is available, so that option doesn’t exist.
“So simply saying we need more money to solve our problems is an inadequate response to the challenges facing us. The alternative for local government, as I see it, is either you embrace a programme of reform and change and you drive and shape it, or you don’t. But either way, change is going to come anyway.”
But does he has the full support of his cabinet colleagues? Will Carwyn Jones’ successor as First Minister – widely tipped to be Mark Drakeford – share this appetite for reform? And will Mr Davies even be in his current role in a new post-Carwyn cabinet?
Mr Davies said: “I am sure there are some people who cannot wait to get rid of Alun Davies and hope that he will be gone before too long, in the hope then that everything stops and goes back to where it has been. But unfortunately, where it has been is not where people want it to be. I haven’t met anybody in the six months in this portfolio and the five years I had in other portfolios, as well as the 10 years I have been elected, who believes the current shape of local government is the shape of the future.
“And I haven’t met anybody who believes that John Redwood [former Welsh Secretary who created the current map of 22 local authorities back in 1996] got it right. The miserable experience of the last 20 years, quite frankly, of debating endlessly the future of local government in Wales will not stop because you have a different minister... it will just carry on.
“What I have set out is a vision for the future of local government and how do you get from where we are today. You have people working extraordinarily hard and the toughest job in Welsh politics is that of leading a local authority and not being a minister in Cardiff Bay. Trying to make ends meet and trying to get budgets to work and trying to protect services... I get and understand all of that.
“But the real danger facing local government today isn’t a minster with a map, but local government without an alternative. And what happens then is that local government is shaped by forces that they can no longer control.”
So what happens next?
Mr Davies said: “What I am anticipating and expecting from local government in the next few weeks is a vision for the future. And I would like them to embrace a vision of more powers and not less.”
But isn’t this debate being shaped by the relative weakness of the private sector in Wales – if the economy was more prosperous, would it attract much, if any, interest?
Mr Davies said: “Whatever your GVA might be, you should be working in a way which is straightforward, simple, enables accountability and reduces the structural process that we have within government. And the key thing for me is that we put more resources in the frontline. That is absolutely fundamental, and that we protect the positions and jobs of people who are on the frontline. What I am looking to do is creating capacity within local government and creating resilience. It