Week 23 - Local Government Reorganisation / English Devolution

Local Government Reorganisation isn’t usually what many people would think of as big news, but this week it is - Monday’s announcement from the Government suggests big changes are in store. 

Today we have three layers of councils, County, District and Town/Parish.   

Broadly, Devon County Council looks after roads and potholes, schools and children, adult social care, and a selection of other smaller services including libraries, public health, and coroners.  This costs around 72% of the overall council tax.  Devon County serves close to a million people, alongside eight district councils. 

Teignbridge District Council looks after planning, bins and recycling, collecting the council tax, housing, green spaces, environmental health and public toilets, and licencing.  This is about 8% of the total council tax.  Teignbridge serves around 170,000 people. 

Finally there is your local Town or Parish council which looks after a variety of more local services.  Usually between 4% to 8% of the council tax bill. 

The government wants to see a new set of unitary councils, each serving around 500,000 people, covering all the services from the county and district councils. And a new Combined County Authority and an elected Mayor in overall control. 

They see this as improved devolution, but to me it makes decision-making more remote. 

Teignbridge isn’t perfect but runs a pretty reliable service in the areas that it covers and runs on a tight budget.  Devon is in financial trouble with an unsatisfactory judgement on its children’s services and an overspend on SEND of some £175M.  Potholes are out of control and social care is having to be cut back every year. 

To get to the government target of a unitary council serving half a million people across Devon, Plymouth and Torbay would likely be two or three unitary councils.  Torbay council is already unitary but has around the same number of people as the Devon eight districts.  Plymouth is also a unitary, with around 260,000 people. 

Reorganisation may lead to a consistent structure, and a single council for services and help but is rarely an answer to all the problems.  The time, effort and money spent in delivering a new structure is usually hard to justify. 

The largest number of issues that I tend to have in my inbox revolve around housing and planning, roads and SEND.   

The planning issues are usually in the Government defined rules or the top-down housing numbers that delivers too many unaffordable homes in our area, and not enough homes for social rent. Reorganisation may help but may compound the issue if Torquay’s unachievable target is added.  Neither Teignbridge nor Torquay have enough space to add the number of houses demanded centrally. 

Will breaking up Devon County Council help deliver better services and save costs?  It might, but not easily.  

In the long run, we can judge whether we have better services or not, and what happens to council tax bills.  However, I suspect that a restructure applying metro mayor solutions to a largely rural county won’t magically solve our issues.