Councils set out plans for commission
Local authorities seek role in referendum debate
SCOTLAND’S councils are to force their future and the role of core public services on to the independence referendum agenda with the first ever commission into local democracy.
Against a backdrop of ongoing centralisation of services and concerns over many community decisions being taken at Holyrood, senior councillors, experts and representatives of wider civic society are to set out the case for a new local government.
The commission meets for the first time this week and aims to deliver its findings by the spring, in time to attempt to influence the referendum six months later.
However, president of the body which represents all 32 local authorities and chairman of the commission, David O’Neill, has sought to play down a reorganisation and redrawing of the council map of Scotland, as well as the number of councillors.
The Cosla president said: “Everyone knows that regardless of the outcome of the referendum the status quo will not prevail in Scotland but there’s been very little consideration of what this should mean for local people and local decision making.
“I think we have a duty to turn that situation around. When you speak to people in local communities, the real story is not about the internal working of Holyrood or Westminster.
“It’s about the local services that communities need, and about giving people a real say about what matters to them.
“So it’s not surprising that the wider debate about Scotland’s future has often failed to spark the imagination because on both sides it’s still hard for people to see what positive difference that could be made to real lives.”
As well as Mr O’ Neil l , the commission will include Professor Richard Kerley of Queen Margaret University, Steven Heddle, leader of Orkney Council, Glasgow City Council’s leader Gordon Matheson, Drew Hendry, SNP leader of Highland Council, STUC general secretary Graham Smith, Reform Scotland director Geoff Mawdsley and Calum Irving, chief executive of Voluntary Action Scotland.
In recent months moves by several councils have managed to bring local issues to the national agenda, with the calls for more devolution to the islands in particular seen as the game-changer.
Councillors on the Western Isles have already publicly stated their desire to move away from 21 wards to 12, with all public services being brought under one roof.
Glasgow has also argued recently for further powers to Scotland’s ‘city regions’, while Edinburgh and the Lothians are working on future plans on everything from education, economic infrastructure and transport provision.
Although many within the SNP argue the landscape will only fundamentally change in the event of a ‘Yes’ vote, the Institute of Fiscal Studies recently estimated only 25% of cuts have yet come online while there has also been a hiatus on major savings decisions in Scotland until after the Referendum.
One source said: “Everyone and their dog expects change. There’s a recognition within local government that it’ll change by 2016. Stuff that right now will scare the horses, like universities, hospitals and council budgets and the need for change is also being discussed within the Government. So it will change.”
Gordon Matheson said: “From Scotland’s islands to the Borders, the idea of a revitalised local government with real power and flexibility to promote economic growth is gaining traction.
“No one size fits all and that means powers coming from both Holyrood and Westminster to local g ove r n ment and communities.”
STATISTICS on Glasgow’s ill-health, rate of worklessness, educational under-achievement and all others of that ilk have been recently given their not-infrequent airing in the media. In these discussions one significant fact is always overlooked by those with blind faith in statistics, which can often be, if not lies and damned lies, at least very misleading. That issue is the one of Glasgow’s city boundaries, and of whether like is being compared with like.
There is no other city in the UK, and possibly Europe, whose boundaries are as illogical and actually unjust to its inhabitants, as are Glasgow’s. Whilst 50% of the jobs in the city are taken by those who live outside of its boundaries, these off-limit areas for the city’s council tax base include some of the wealthiest, healthiest and educationally privileged people in the country, and these areas are actually contiguous with the city. Were districts like East Dunbartonshire and East Renfrewshire, which have no historical, economic or social legitimacy except as council tax havens whose inhabitants utilise the city’s resources (not only jobs, but other facilities like cultural ones), included within the city’s limits a still serious but much less distorted picture of the real economic and social situation in Glasgow would be gained.
Up to 1914 the administrations of Glasgow Corporation pursued an aggressive policy of boundary expansion for the city. A century later it would well behove the (on this issue) pusillanimous occupants of the City Chambers to grasp this nettle again, and to thus aim to expand the city’s tax base in such a way as to help provide the means to combat the real (though statistically exaggerated by the above gerrymander) social and economic problems of the city. The metropolitan boundary issue is a bigger one for Glasgow than any national border matter, and its city limits a real barrier to its economic and social advance.