Today, I will update Parliament on the Government’s ambitious plans to introduce legislation which will simplify governance arrangements for local authorities in England and to ensure local communities have the right mechanisms to engage with their council.
In the English Devolution White Paper, the Government committed to bring in consistent and accountable structures across local government by considering which governance models available to local authorities will best support their decision making.
At present there is a complex and opaque system which allows councils to operate one of three governance models: cabinet arrangements with a directly elected council mayor, leader and cabinet, or the committee system. As a result, councils are left with a complicated governance system. This can be confusing to the taxpayer, particularly in the case of the committee system, which can be unclear, duplicative, and wasteful, leading to slower, less efficient decision making.
The Government plan to legislate to abolish the committee system, requiring those councils currently operating this model to transition to the leader and cabinet model (which the vast majority of councils in England already operate). This will simplify the governance system and ensure all councils operate an executive form of governance, providing clarity on responsibility and accountability, and improving efficiency in decision making. This change will provide clearer, more easily understood structures at a local level, improving efficiency and preventing authorities from wasting taxpayer funds on needless changes to systems of governance. The law already allows for and requires overview and scrutiny arrangements to be in place.
The Government recognise there are several directly elected local council mayors currently in place, and we propose to accept the continuation of these 13 legacy directly elected council mayors, while introducing measures to ensure a more consistent approach by not facilitating the creation of new ones. This would also include any councils undergoing local government reorganisation now or the future, where any new unitary would be required to operate on the leader and cabinet model of governance, regardless of whether any constituent part currently has a legacy directly elected council mayor.
There are pre-existing routes for those councils with legacy directly elected local mayors to adopt the leader and cabinet model, depending on the individual circumstances in each area, where they wish to do so.
This will avoid the potential confusion caused by the establishment of new regional mayors for strategic authorities and for councils. Directly elected regional mayors continue to be a prerequisite for significant devolution of powers and funding: it is at this strategic level that the single focal point of leadership for the area and direct electoral accountability is considered to work best. Our ambitious plans for local government reorganisation will build the foundations of better local governance, enabling decisions to be taken more easily at the most effective level of government. Strategic regional mayors will be empowered to drive local growth in the long term, with local authorities tackling big challenges in service delivery lead by a leader and their cabinet.