Government rules out further reorganisation of local councils

THE Government has rejected cutting the number of Scottish local authorities, as the president of umbrella group Cosla condemneda call from senior police for councils to follow their example and forcibly merge.

Responding to the call from the head of the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents, Local Government Minister Derek Mackay made clear the Government was happy with progress on making public services “simpler, better co-ordinated”. He said: “We have made clear, that there will be no reorganisation of local government in the foreseeable future.”

Convention of Scottish Local Authorities president councillor David O’Neill was more critical of the police intervention, saying: “The police did not embark on this model – this was something that was imposed on them. So for Chief Superintendent David O’Connor to claim some form of success, especially after six weeks, is nonsense. He may want to come back in six years and we’d listen. I would have thought that to have reached the rank of superintendent in the police you would have needed to acknowledge the importance of gathering evidence. Well let me be clear, Superintendent O’Connor has no evidence to support this claim.

“Scotland needs real reform through community planning not ill judged re-organisation as spouted by an unelected official.”

Councillor O’Neill argued there was “a tendency to think that simply centralising services will save money or improve services”.

He said: “Since 1980 there have been more than 20 major structural reforms in the UK public sector. None of them have been delivered in the timescales originally suggested. None of them have delivered the financial savings they were designed to, and they have all diverted money and energy away from the job of delivering services to communities.”

Instead, said Councillor O’Neill, it was more important to look at the way collaboration was operating now, particularly with health and social care reforms which were showing new ways of working across the country.

Ross Martin of the Centre for Scottish Public Policy said that with the police opting for 14 divisions and the college sector being re-shaped into 14 it was clear where the Government’s thinking was. He said: “It has got to be a coalition of the willing. Where collaboration works between councils, that can grow.”

He pointed to the current collaboration his group were doing for the Edinburgh City Region Project, which seeks to create consensus among planners.

Scottish LibDem leader Willie Rennie added: “We need a cast-iron guarantee from SNP ministers that they will not force their centralisation agenda upon our local councils and health boards.”