Examination of Witnesses (Questions 139
- 155)
THURSDAY 9 SEPTEMBER 2004
MR NICK
SKELLETT AND
MR TIM
BYLES
Q139 Chairman: May I welcome you
to the second session and ask you to identify yourselves for the
record.
Mr Skellett: I am Nick Skellet.
I am Chairman of the County Councils Network.
Mr Byles: I am Tim Byles, Chief
Executive of Norfolk County Council and the lead advisor to the
CCN on regions.
Q140 Chairman: Do you want to say
anything by way of introduction, or are you happy for us to go
straight to questions?
Mr Skellett: Straight into questions.
Q141 Mr O'Brien: The question of
regional assemblies and local government is an issue that has
been discussed and bandied about a great deal. Should the Government
link the establishment of regional assemblies with the abolition
of county councils?
Mr Skellett: No, they should not,
but they obviously have in this bill and it is not quite clear
why they have jumped to that conclusion.
Q142 Mr O'Brien: Do you think that
the elected regional assemblies should be the third tier of local
government?
Mr Skellett: If we look at the
experience of the present partnership assemblies that we have
in the South-East—and Sandy Bruce Lockhardt referred to
it earlier—where most of the membership covers two-tier
areas, the differences in what we do from what an elected assembly
would do is significant but we are producing strategies—regional
spatial strategies, transport strategies, cultural strategies,
tourist strategies—and we are working in a two-tier system
and the cost per annum is £3.5 million. We monitor the RDA.
We do not make appointments to the RDA and we do not control the
regional fire service. On the other hand, there is a regional
structure for the fire services in the South-East: they have come
together. We are getting on and doing those things at a regional
level which it is better for local authorities to do together
in a fairly inexpensive way, in many ways on a voluntary basis,
and clearly that question of drawing up powers from local government
is less of a problem because it is local government working in
partnership with its regional structure.
Mr Byles: The CCN does not necessarily
see a link between the structure of local authorities in the creation
of regional assemblies, which is the first part of your question.
It does think that any change should be linked to evidence, objectively
gathered, on the performance of local authorities and indeed the
role of regional assemblies. On the costs of any change, we believe
there is substantially more evidence available on the costs of
any local government reorganisation than is currently being made
available to people voting on the subject in the North-East
Q143 Mr Sanders: The Government is
proposing to create a number of large unitary authorities. Are
these not going to be a satisfactory replacement for county councils?
What is the problem that you have with large unitary authorities
replacing county councils?
Mr Skellett: We believe the indications
are that there would be large unitaries, which is following on
the policies and advice that we have given. We think this is correct.
We are promoting the continuance of county government for cultural,
traditional, heritage reasons but also because of the economy
of large units. In many cases, I think the creation of a unitary
county would be quite appropriate. With regards to the localness
of—
Q144 Mr Sanders: Did you say the
creation of a unitary county?
Mr Skellett: A unitary authority
on a county area. It will be a different animal entirely, of course,
because it will have different functions. The county council,
if there is restructuring, obviously will cease to exist, but
there are advantages culturally, economically and in service provision
to continue, because clearly the 85 per cent of the public services
through local government are provided by the county councils,
and for the major ones, social services, transportation and education,
those structures are already in place in a county area and therefore
for the new animal to take that over is obviously of an advantage
in cost terms.
Mr Byles: Larger unitaries clearly
do make sense in service delivery terms and in cost terms and
also their ability to reflect the different needs of urban and
rural areas which are mixed across much of England.
Q145 Chris Mole: Could you comment
on the evidence from the ADSS because I think the SSI inspection
process has shown that the smaller social care authorities have
had real problems after the establishment of unitary government
in delivering their roles.
Mr Byles: Yes. Clearly the ADSS
view and the view of the Chambers of Commerce pushes you towards
larger authorities for capacity reasons and also for reasons of
being able to manage resources, particularly those for vulnerable
people across larger areas and to make sure that less people fall
through the gaps. That view of ADSS is shared by the CCN, yes.
Q146 Mr Cummings: In areas where
elected assemblies are not established, should the county councils
consider taking a wider role, on the lines of an assembly?
Mr Skellett: Yes, they certainly
should, and in my experience they do take a wide role. At the
present time I am chairman of the South-Eastern Regional Assembly
and the county councils are to the fore, as they have to be—in
fact, they provide much of the resources, particularly in strategic
planning, for the partnership assembly secretariat.
Q147 Mr Cummings: If you believe
in that, how do you believe legislation could facilitate this
development?
Mr Byles: It needs to be very
much clearer on the way in which local authorities engage directly
with the work of elected regional assemblies. Sir Sandy Bruce
Lockhardt has just made some points in relation to that which
the CCN shares. It should not be some kind of informal, consultative
relationship. The issue between the ERAs and large scale, single
purpose local authorities who are commissioning and providing
a whole range of services as well as leading the localities in
which they are located, means that that relationship needs to
be much more interactive and we would like to see that more clearly
expressed in the language of the bill itself.
Q148 Chairman: You think it needs
to be in the bill.
Mr Byles: Yes.
Q149 Chairman: Surely it is going
to be done by force of personality of the individual organisations,
particularly in those areas that do not get the regional assemblies,
so why do we need it in legislation as opposed to letting people
just get on with it?
Mr Byles: As Sir Sandy Bruce Lockhardt
said, people change and current ways of wanting things to operate
either from a ministerial level or within local authorities can
be greatly assisted by making that explicit in the act itself
in requiring that type of relationship. Clearly much of the success
of this is going to depend on the goodwill and the engagement
of people at both levels but a clear steer from government would
be very helpful in ensuring that quality of service is improved.
Q150 Christine Russell: Could I ask
you to turn your attention to rural areas, because obviously county
councils cover large tracts of rural England. What particular
concerns do you have about the arguments that are made in some
quarters by the opponents of regional assemblies, that all the
focus will be on tackling the problems of the big cities? Is that
a fear you have? If it is, what can the Government do to address
it?
Mr Skellett: It is a fear. It
is a real fear. At the present time, the strategic authorities
in rural areas are the county councils and they deal essentially
in many of the services directly with government. But where it
is proposed to have the three referendum, urban populations dominate,
and therefore it is quite conceivable that you could have a regional
strategy which unduly disadvantaged the rural communities, however
large they may be. It is therefore very important—-
Q151 Christine Russell: Can you spell
out in what way?
Mr Skellett: If the regional strategy
is to direct resources in particular strategies, it may advantage
the majority, dominant urban population. One counter to that is
to have strong large strategic authorities representing those
rural areas, to act as a counter-balance, aided by a very clear
way of working, setting the legislation between the region and
those local authorities. You need both. You need strategic authorities
which have some weight to protect the rural areas and you need
the relationships between the region and those local authorities
clearly set. It may well be that certain rural proofing ideas
could be brought into strategies. In the same way we have an environmental
assessment on most decisions we make locally, you could have a
rural assessment on the effect on the rural communities of proposals
at the region. So you can have such devices, but really the main
protection will be these strong rural strategic authorities which
have the weight and, secondly, the relationship they have with
the region.
Mr Byles: The interplay between
urban areas across what I would describe as shire England (as
opposed to large metropolitan city areas) and the rural areas
that surround them is very significant, particularly in the balance
of where people live and work and spend their leisure time and
the need to travel to and fro between rural areas and cities.
Clearly, there is a whole range of issues about delivering services
into sparsely populated rural areas, but it is the interplay between
rural communities and the towns and cities that sit within that
which takes us back to the question of larger scale unitary authorities
making much more sense to take into account the needs of ranges
of individuals in both of those areas.
Q152 Chris Mole: Mr Byles, you touched
on costs just now. Do you think the Government accurately estimated
the cost of creating regional assemblies and new larger unitary
authorities? You must be aware of the history of Banham and the
changes that took place in Scotland. These things are no great
secret. The more small authorities you have, the more it is going
to cost you, surely.
Mr Byles: Yes, that is clearly
the case. I do not believe the Government is yet making clear
the amount of objective information—and there is a great
deal around—on the true costs of establishing new unitary
authorities. The costs of regional assemblies clearly are estimates
on the basis of less evidence, but there is a great deal around
and we would like to see that objectively verified by the Institute
of Public Finance on the whole costs of the options which are
being put to the public—which we believe in the case of
Northumberland, for example, is going to be the equivalent of
over £100 on a typical council tax bill, taking into account
the transitional as well as the operating costs. The current cost
information which is being made available we believe is misleading
and is not a full assessment of all the costs of re-organising
local councils. We think that should be made a clear objective
and speedily made available to the people who are going to be
expressing a view shortly on these issues.
Q153 Christine Russell: Could I ask
you briefly about planning and transport. Do you think the Government
has it right in the way it proposed to split the transport responsibilities
between the regional authority and local authorities. Secondly,
the county councils fought quite a vigorous campaign to have a
say on planning, did they not, by the retention of the structure
plans for a few more years? What are your views? What are the
views of the network on the proposals in the bill regarding regional
spatial strategies and the responsibility for planning matters
for local authorities?
Mr Skellett: I think the County
Councils Network and others helped to improve the planning bill
and the planning act considerably. I still think that if we had
started again we would have done something quite different.
Q154 Christine Russell: We might
not believe that in Cheshire, where the county is trying to stop
the city building houses. But that is a different issue.
Mr Skellett: We are not talking
about individual decisions; we are talking about the framework.
We always felt the structure plans were the bits that were not
"broke" in the system. The county councils as existing,
and presumably the larger strategic authorities, will continue
to support good planning at local level and at the regional level
and continue to offer resources to do so.
Q155 Christine Russell: Do we really
need three tiers of planning: regional, county, district?
Mr Skellett: Even in the new two-tier
system the practice has actually been to create inevitably sub-regional
strategies. In fact, I am aware of the minister writing to one
particular region asking this particular person, who was a chief
planning officer, to look into the possibility of this Committee
actually producing sub-regional strategies for I think different
areas which constituted three-quarters of that entire region.
There was a recognition that the region as a whole was so large
and the differences in interest and the differences in geography
and population were so different, that you had to look at that.
So we went back effectively to a three-tier system through the
sub-regional work. But some of those relationships are not clearly
defined. Some of the responsibilities, some of the resource allocations
are not clearly defined, and general criticisms of a lack of clear
definition and a lack of thinking things clearly through are some
of the criticisms which the Local Government Association and County
Councils Network have about the present bill and its particular
relationship with local government. Local government is not the
same as a stakeholder. The region will rely on the local government
to provide the services. Local government is managed and run by
people who are elected. On the transport issue, I think it is
appropriate for authorities working together—if you like
to call that a regional structure—to come up with strategies
which clearly link county areas—and I do not mean just counties
but county areas, because there are some issues which have to
go across borders. But while those local authorities, counties
and unitaries have the job of producing local transport plans
and meeting local government office requirements, it is difficult
to see why you should have another intervention, other than the
umbrella willingness of those local authorities to work to get
a local transport plan.
Chairman: On that note, could I thank
you very much for your evidence.
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