How a new model of governance could empower small councils

Your editorial on local government (Editorial, 14 April) concludes by pointing up the tension between the economic benefits of scale claimed by proponents of large councils and the community benefits of small councils closer to those they represent and serve. After a lifetime career as an officer in local government, and having chaired two commissions overseeing council finances and electoral boundaries, I have come to wonder if the answer is to separate the council (ie those elected to represent their constituents) from the organisation that is responsible for delivering local services to people and communities (ie the council employees).

The present system treats these as one and the same, but their functions are different. I believe it would be possible to create a different relationship, whereby the elected, political body effectively commissioned services from the delivery organisation, run entirely on managerial lines. This would sever the current one-to-one relationship between them and allow a number of elected councils to be served by one delivery agency, holding out the prospect of achieving the economic benefits of larger operational scale and the political benefits of closeness between electors and elected.

The governance of such arrangements would be novel for local government, but familiar from other forms of interorganisational relationships in the public and private sectors. It is surely not beyond us to devise a model that might offer the best of both worlds.
Ronnie Hinds
Edinburgh

• Your editorial rightly concludes that the model of a large city-based unitary authority does not work for rural areas. The solution there is district councils, which are usually centred on a large town (Chippenham, Devizes, Salisbury, Taunton, Yeovil) that the surrounding population relies on (for shops, work, hospitals, education), and which have sufficient income to make meaningful decisions that are right for the district.

In Somerset, the Conservatives in central government and the county council proposed a huge unitary council stretching from Wincanton to Exmoor. Recognising the political wind, for unitaries the four district councils proposed two authorities either side of the M5 to minimise the damage. They commissioned a referendum of the Somerset population, who voted two to one for the two smaller unitaries.

But Robert Jenrick overrode the will of the population, and we are lumbered with a huge council that is inappropriate for rural needs and on the verge of bankruptcy. The irony is that the Liberal Democrats won the next local election, and so they are faced with picking up the pieces.
John Clark
Wincanton, Somerset

• I’d like to propose a way of positioning local councils front and centre in our democratic processes. To remove the political careerist approach in our national politics, and to bring vital understanding into the way local governance works, can we make it a rule of law that anyone wishing to stand for parliament must have a decade of experience of local government as an elected councillor? It would bring resolve, dedication and an understanding of life at street level. And if that removed most of the current party high flyers, that would be a small price to pay. The most worthwhile candidates could be back in the media headlines in three elections’ time anyway.
John Bullock
Sherborne, Dorset

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