Chapter 17

Laying Bare Local Government and Devolution

In This Chapter

Looking at local government throughout the UK

Electing local officials

Checking out devolution and what it means for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

If you want to know how government works across the length and breadth of the UK, from the tiniest hamlet to the largest city, this is the chapter to check out. I hold up the inner complexities of local government for scrutiny from county council to town hall. I also take a brief peak into one of the big political movements of our time – devolution, with powers moving from the British government in Westminster to the powerful parliament of Scotland and the Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies in all their Technicolor – or should that be technocratic? – glory. See Chapter 18 for even more on this.

Understanding that All Politics Is Local

Prominent American politician Thomas ‘Tip’ O’Neill once famously said that ‘all politics is local’. He meant that what happens close to home, in the lives of electors, affects the way they view politicians and ultimately the way they vote. If an individual is made redundant or faces a hefty tax bill from her local council, it’s bound to influence the way she views politicians prancing on the national stage.

Often political commentators and journalists focus on the inner workings of the corridors of power in Westminster or which cabinet minister says what, but most people really don’t care that much about these goings-on. What the regular people see is how politicians and their policies influence their daily lives. It’s local government by a long way that has the biggest impact rather than the MPs, ministers and party leaders.

Statute law – enacted by the UK parliament – sets out the structure of local government. For instance, through an act of parliament the UK government set up the devolved Scottish parliament and the different mayoral authorities in England and Wales.

Looking at what local government does

The Westminster parliament – or in some instances the devolved parliaments and national assemblies of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (see Chapter 18 for more on these institutions) – sets the big national policies such as income tax, hospital building programmes and even whether to go to war or not. But underneath all the national action, local governments do the rest of the tasks that need doing to make society work, and what a lot of work it is! Some of the duties that local governments perform include

• Overseeing the running of state schools
• Providing social services
• Deciding upon planning issues in the locality
• Maintaining public roads and local public transport
• Arranging refuse collections and enforcing environmental health policies
• Providing local amenities such as leisure centres, libraries, museums and parks, to name just a few
• Overseeing the local police force and fire and rescue services
• Providing local social housing

No wonder that local government – along with the National Health Service (NHS) – is among the country’s biggest employers.

Critics of local governments often say that they ‘only empty the bins’, but as you can see from the list, local governments are responsible for an awful lot of facilities and services. In fact, if no local government operated, you’d soon know about it. In the winter of 1978–79 many local government workers went on strike and chaos ensued. Rubbish wasn’t collected and even the dead lay unburied in Liverpool. This period was ‘the winter of discontent’. The Labour government of Prime Minister Jim Callaghan was held responsible for the strikes, and at the subsequent general election of April 1979 Labour was defeated. All politics is local!

Apart from its role in deciding planning issues, local government has no say in the running of hospitals. That job falls to the NHS. Under the current structure of the NHS the decisions over patient treatment, budgeting and even commissioning new building projects are the call of either the individual hospital or a group of hospitals called a foundation trust.

Funding local government

So who pays for local government in the UK? Put simply, you do. Local governments are funded in two key ways:

• A grant of money from the central UK government, raised through central taxation such as income tax or corporation tax
• Council tax levied on residents living in local homes, and business rates

About three quarters of the money spent by local authorities in the UK actually originates from the central UK government.

Why does central government give so much money to local government rather than let it raise more through local council tax? Well, the situation’s a bit of a power game. If local government was able to raise as much money as it wanted locally, it could become very powerful. By keeping at least partial control of the purse strings, central government lets those in local government know who’s boss.

Both local and central government are elected, and it’s possible for one party to be in charge of central government while another’s running a local government.

UK cities that have an elected mayor – the most prominent is London – raise money through a surcharge on the local council tax. (See ‘Re-energising local government’, later in this chapter, for more on the mayoral system.)

Council tax is based on property values. Each property is put into a band from A to G. Properties in band A are the smallest and cheapest, rising to band G covering the largest and most expensive homes. At the start of the financial year – in April – the local council decides how much it needs to collect from the occupiers of properties in each of the bands. People who live on their own, or are elderly or disabled can claim a discount on their annual bill of up to 25 per cent.

At times, central government is disturbed to see sharp rises in council tax and has the legal right to cap them. It tells the local council to draw up a new budget and to keep its expenditure down so that council tax bills don’t rise by too much.

Taking in the structure of local government in England

Local government structure is very complex. Dividing up all the different types of local government into two is thus probably the best approach:

• Principal authorities deal with important local issues, such as schools, planning and environmental affairs. They have lots of civil servants and contractors working for them, and they receive money from local council tax and grants from central government.
• Community authorities are the most local of local government. They rely on volunteers and don’t have a bureaucracy. They oversee the management of local parks and allotments and advise the local principal authority on planning issues. They’re the ones who put in requests to the principal authority for it to do work on local amenities.

  Parish councils and town councils are the two main types of community authority in England. Prominent figures in the local community stand for election to these councils. Council members are often aligned to a particular political party but a fair number of candidates for parish or town councils stand as independents.

Most people refer to principal authorities, whether they’re county or district councils or unitary authorities, simply as councils.

The system of principal authorities in England is a real patchwork:

• In some areas a county council is responsible for education, waste management and big planning issues within the county. Below the county council, district councils are in charge of local planning and refuse collection, as well as smaller local planning issues.
• Some parts of the country have only one tier of principal authority – catchily called unitary authorities. These unitary authorities in effect do the work of both a county and a district council.
• In larger cities, a combination of elected officials and council members takes charge of meeting some needs. London, with a population of 9 million, has an elected assembly and an elected mayor, as well as 32 separate boroughs responsible for delivering services to the public. Other major urban areas, such as Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds, have their own councils, with separate boroughs actually delivering the services.

Regardless of whether you live in a part of the country that’s run by a county council, unitary authority or even a London borough, you get the chance to elect people as councillors. It’s the job of councillors to take the big decisions in your locality and ensure that the bureaucrats running the administration do their jobs properly.

Heading north: Scottish local government

Local government structure in Scotland is much more straightforward than in England. A divide between principal authorities and community authorities (instead of parish councils the Scots have community councils) does still exist; but instead of having lots of different types of principal authority, Scotland’s local government is divided into 32 unitary authorities. Some are based on county borders (and are geographically quite large) and others are based on the boundaries of the big cities – Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen.

Elections for councillors in each of Scotland’s 32 unitary authorities are held every four years.

Local authorities have a statutory (legal) duty to consult community councils on planning, development and other issues directly affecting that local community. However, the community council has no direct say in the delivery of services.

The Scottish unitary authorities are funded through a combination of council tax and grants provided by the Scottish parliament. Since 2012 the Scottish parliament has had the power to vary income tax up or down by 3 pence; as yet it has never used this power, called the Scottish Variable Rate. Following the Scottish independence referendum in September 2014, there was a commitment by the UK government to devolve even greater powers to the Scottish government. This is very likely to include the power to set a larger range of taxes.

Heading west: Wales and Northern Ireland

Like Scotland, Welsh local government is divided into unitary authorities – 22 in total. Some are based on county borders and others take in the big cities such as Cardiff, Newport and Swansea. Below the unitary authorities are communities that act in the same way as a parish council in England and a community council in Scotland.

As for Northern Ireland, the 26 district councils don’t have the same powers as principal authorities in England or unitary authorities in Scotland. Their functions include responsibility for waste and recycling services, leisure and community services, building control, and local economic and cultural development. They aren’t planning authorities, but are consulted on some planning applications, and have no say over education matters, housing or road building – these are the preserve of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the ins and outs of which I discuss in Chapter 18.

Re-energising local government

It used to be the case that after a local election the newly elected councillors would meet to elect the leadership of the council, and members of the biggest party would take the senior posts such as treasurer or head of planning. In 2000 this cosy little system was shaken up when the government decided that English local authorities with populations of over 85,000 would have to choose between one of three new management structures, two of which included the introduction of an elected mayor. The three structures proposed were as follows:

• Up to ten elected councillors would form a cabinet, and one cabinet member would be designated as council leader.
• Up to ten elected councillors would form a cabinet, but instead of one of their number being leader, an elected mayor would fill that post.
• An elected mayor would get to appoint a manager, who’d then appoint a management team to oversee the daily workings of the council.

Most councillors chose the first option – a cabinet and council leader – rather than an elected mayor. However, those councils deciding that they wanted an elected mayor had to have this decision ratified by a yes vote in a referendum. (In a referendum those people registered to vote are asked to vote on a yes-or-no question rather than for a particular candidate.) If the referendum passed, mayoral elections then took place.

Of only 17 elected mayors across England, by far the most important is the mayor of London (see the nearby sidebar, ‘Introducing London’s mayor’). And because so few authorities have an elected mayor, some see the revision of the system as a bit of a waste of time.

The election of Stuart Drummond as the mayor of Hartlepool in 2002 gave critics of the mayoral system ammunition. Drummond was the mascot of the local football club, Hartlepool United, and he campaigned dressed as a monkey. His one stated policy was simian in nature: he pledged to provide free bananas to schoolchildren. Drummond won by a landslide and has since won a further two terms – which shows that he must be doing something right in the job – although he did renege on his pledge to supply free bananas due to lack of funds.

Virtually all towns and cities in the UK have a mayor, only not one elected by the public. The mayor turns up at public events to represent the council and the job is largely ceremonial. The only real power a mayor has lies in chairing the meeting of the local council. Invariably, local councillors take turns to do the job of mayor.

Policing the police: The advent of police and crime commissioners

For years many had called for greater accountability for police forces in England and Wales. So, in 2012 the first elections took place across England and Wales for the brand new post of police and crime commissioner. These commissioners replaced the abolished local police authorities, and the big idea was that an individual should oversee how the police perform in a particular police authority. For example, West Midlands Police is overseen by a police and crime commissioner for the West Midlands, elected by all voters in the region.

So that they can properly bring pressure to bear on the police force in their area these commissioners have important powers:

• They decide the amount of the surcharge on council taxpayers, called the precept, that pays for the upkeep of the police.
• They’re responsible for the appointment, suspension and dismissal of the police chief constable.

When it came to election time for the police and crime commissioners, only a very small proportion of voters turned out to decide who should have the job, and that brought the process into disrepute. In addition, people have criticised the expense of the police and crime commissioners (especially their salary), and said they impose yet another layer of bureaucracy in an already deeply bureaucratic institution – the police force.

Police and crime commissioners hold office for four years, so they next come up for re-election in 2016. Many commentators suggest that the government may abolish the post at that time.

Granting Power from the Centre – Devolution

The UK is made up of four nations or parts – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Each of these parts has its own unique system of local government, partly due to – drum roll, please – devolution!

Arguably the biggest constitutional change in the UK since the Second World War, devolution involves the UK parliament based in Westminster transferring power to the Scottish parliament based in Holyrood, Edinburgh, the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff and the Northern Ireland Assembly in Stormont, Belfast.

The UK parliament granted devolution to Scotland and Wales in the late 1990s and the Northern Ireland Assembly came into being in 1999 as a consequence of the ongoing peace process.

The new, devolved system differs from what’s called a federalist system – such as operates in Germany and the United States – because the central government (the UK parliament in Westminster) can

• Take back the powers it devolved at any time by enacting a new law.
• Abolish the devolved parliaments and assemblies.

When it comes to devolution, the UK parliament in Westminster retains certain powers. Excepted powers stay with the UK parliament no matter what and forever. Reserved powers may at some later stage be transferred from the UK parliament to the devolved institution.

Although the UK central government has the right to abolish the Scottish parliament or the Welsh Assembly, it’s highly unlikely ever to use this power. Such action would be considered undemocratic because it would be going against the wishes of voters in Scotland and Wales who said ‘yes’ in a referendum on whether to have a working parliament or assembly.

The legal right of the UK central government to take back powers has been used during the Northern Irish peace process. At times, the parties in the Northern Ireland Assembly have either boycotted the government or been unable to work together. In these circumstances, the central government of the UK has taken back the powers that it in effect loaned the assembly, but restored them when the parties settled their differences.

Scotland voted in 2014 on whether or not it wanted to go for full independence from the UK. The result was ‘no’, and Scotland remains part of the UK but with a devolved parliament with some tax-raising powers. I discuss the Scottish parliament and political scene in more detail in Chapter 18.

The final few days prior to the Scottish independence referendum were dominated by a commitment from the leaders of the UK parliament’s three biggest parties offering to grant the Scottish parliament more powers. As a result, politician from Wales and much of England suggested that they too should have more powers.

A member of the UK parliament is called an MP, of the Scottish parliament an MSP, of the Welsh Assembly an AM and of the Northern Ireland Assembly an MLA. That’s an awful lot of politicians and an awful lot of abbreviations!