The face of local government is about to change forever.
Now there’s a thrilling phrase. You’ll all be reeling from that, I’m sure. Pandemonium in the streets, people screaming in horror, some celebrating.
I jest, of course. To most of you, this seems unimportant and with good reason - most council services just happen in the background, and you only notice things when they go wrong or your council tax bill goes up.
But think about it - everything from care homes to schools to rubbish collection to some parts of healthcare to child protection to road building to festivals to how many houses can be built and where, licensing of pubs and taxis, investment in local leisure facilities. All of it run by one council or another.
Here we have what’s called a three tier system - county council (care, schools / Sen, roads, health), a district council (housing, planning, licensing, arts, culture, leisure, refuse collection, car parks) and a town council (pretty much everything else).
It’s confusing - I spend a lot of time telling people that they need to speak to their county councillor or that the town council doesn’t have anything with a decision to close a road on a Saturday or whatever it may be.
In late December, right before Christmas, the government announced a thing called Devolution. What this means in theory is lots of the powers that MPs and government officials have in Westminster being given to local authorities so that decisions can be made locally, and are more appropriately for those areas. Think Manchester - Andy Burnham is the mayor, and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority gets to make loads of decisions about their city that we in Devon don’t.
The government plans to introduce this everywhere in the UK and will impose it on areas that don’t do it voluntarily. There are a few types of potential new council, but basically they are large, single authorities which will have a desired 500,000 people roughly in each, and will either have a mayor or not.
This is designed to save money - though EDDC runs a balanced budget, DCC does not. They don't get given enough money to do so, but haven't been great at spending what they have.
So what does this mean for East Devon and more specifically Exmouth?
It could mean many things, depending on how Devon is carved up. District and county councils are all meeting this week to decide how they feel this should happen, and at the moment nobody knows.
One thing is for certain, District councils will be abolished - I’m sad about this because obviously I’m a district councillor, the system generally works here and I think I’ve occasionally done some good, not to mention the hundreds of staff who work for us. But that’s an aside, unfortunately - the government have spoken and we must accept.
What it could mean is that, in one scenario we end up with a South West Combined Authority which takes in all of Devon and / or some parts of Cornwall / Somerset with a mayor who has ultimate powers to decide things in your locality.
So theoretically, we could be combined with Exeter / Plymouth / North Devon, or anywhere else in the South West. And that council will control everything. In future, you won’t have a Councillor who works for your ward or town, as you do now. There will no longer be an elected person available for you to contact (and actually get a personalised answer) about your bin collection, or to push for potholes in your road to be pushed up the priority list. Or to advocate for your needs when in crisis. Your councillor (or Assembly member?) will be responsible for everything in, say, East Devon West. Which could mean Exmouth, Topsham, Honiton etc. Your link to local representation, meant to be strengthened because localities can make more decisions, will be obliterated.
And you could have someone from Plymouth, for example, a big, city environment, making decisions about rural affairs in Budleigh. Or how many houses to build on Woodbury Common - because they’re not aware of what we are and how life in a semi rural environment like East Devon works. Or what a ‘Woodbury Common’ is.
In the midst of this lies the town and parish councils, in our case Exmouth Town Council, of which I am currently mayor. There is no mention of them in the government plan. Nada. Not a sausage. What will they do? Will they continue to be funded? Nobody knows!
I actually think that if done properly some of this may work quite well, but I’m led to believe civil servants responsible for this plan are suggesting Labour are trying to rush it through, have not given any real thought to how it will work or understand the scale of the task entails.
And councils have been given one month to effectively get together and decide how they want to proceed, who they want to climb into bed with and how the future of all their local services will be decided from here on in. This is ludicrous.
So basically, be aware of this upcoming change - it will affect you, it will impact on your life.
Comments