Local Government reform
- From: "Adam Gray" <adam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 02:20:01 +0100
I'm not wanting to poke the embers of the debate we've recently had about
the new systems of political management, but it strikes me that part of the
shortcoming of the new system - such as it is - is that only one half of the
management of local government has been reformed: the councillors side. The
officer structure has barely changed at all - there may be some special
advisors for executive councillors, and committee co-ordinators may now
support the scrutiny function but essentially we retain an officer structure
which is broadly incompatible with the new councillor structures.
It seems to me that if the principle for reform is to clarify and enhance
the responsibility of the elected representatives; making them specifically
responsible for decision making, then the old structure where (broadly
speaking) we have a bureaucratic branch and a political branch is
inappropriate.
Regardless of whether an authority has a directly elected mayor or retains a
leader and cabinet model, the consequence of the change has surely been that
there can no longer be a head of the bureaucracy of the same status as the
leader of the council/mayor and where the two remain largely distinct.
Rather, there needs to be a system closer to that of the US, where the
Leader has a chief of staff who is responsible for managing the bureaucracy;
and therefore we move towards a bureaucracy which is far more flexible to
the needs of the political leadership.
For example, we now have councillors responsible for environmental matters,
accountable to the public for those services. Yet broadly, the
decision-making process hasn't changed at all - we still have officers in
the environment department accountable not to that councillor, but to the
Director of their department. In essence the decisions approved by
executive councillors still emerge in the way they did before change - by
the bureaucracy, not the elected branch determining them.
surely therefore the political head of a department needs to be the head of
the department and all the staff work to him or her; in exactly the same way
as a cabinet secretary in the US is the head of that department. The flaw
in that case is that American secretaries are appointed by the president
rather than elected, and therefore tend to have at least some expertise in
business and politics in the area they're likely to be appointed to
administer.
But equally if you take for example Wandsworth, where we actually have a
political class which is incredibly laissez faire - the radical Conservative
politicians who drove the right-wing agenda here have all gone; it's
basically the officers (many of whom date back to the 1970s) who are simply
continuing to implement those policies (if you like, Wandsworth's on
auto-pilot).
There are real problems emerging in Wandsworth as a result; no necessarily
sufficient to have an impact next May, but a growing disillusion none the
less. Contracts, especially the refuse, street cleaning and recycling
contracts have been spectacularly botched, it has been demonstrated on
numerous occasions that the contractors, not councillors, determine the
scope of the contract, the streets are increasingly shabby as a result
(complaints at an 8 year high, for example), and going to councillors
achieves nothing. yet we have a new system of political management that
supposedly gives the councillors the power.
Now part of the problem in this example is councillors choosing not to
exercise their power, but in part its because institutionalism is so strong
in Wandsworth, and the reforms so incomplete that the officer class is in
practice far stronger than the political class nowadays in this borough -
which is hardly a unique example, but which you could never say was the case
when Chope, Mallam and Beresford were running the show.
There could well be a need to retain a split - indeed, it could be
essential, in precisely the same way as staff who work for senators or
congressmen aren't accountable in any way to the US President or his staff;
equally here the split may well be between the staff working for the
executive (the vast bulk) and staff working for the scrutiny side (a vastly
smaller, but separate group).
I'm not here trying to re-open the argument about the merits or demerits of
reform - because whether you like it or not that arguments been had, but
it's clear that there are problems with the scrutiny side in particular, and
I think those problems go far beyond the reluctance of the executive to cede
powers - essentially we have here another example of the major failing of
this government, which is the inability to think through, and fully
implement reform, so yet again we're stuck with a half-way house.
That said, it's not beyond the wit of councils...or maybe it is...to
reorganise sensibly.
Adam
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