Michael Heseltine’s attitude to local government, in office and since, was a welcome contrast to his ministerial colleagues who succeeded him. He valued the contribution of local authorities to economic regeneration and was committed to a form of devolution.
In his article offering advice to Angela Rayner, there is much worthy of consideration (I’ve spent a lifetime working to level up Britain. Angela Rayner, here is my advice, 9 July). But there is one proposal she should certainly not follow: the abolition of over 200 councils to address his claim that the current structure is “incompatible with a coherent, properly led, local partnership with [central] government”. In other words, local government must be reorganised to suit the centre, not local communities.
In our book The Strange Demise of the Local in Local Government, we show the average size of our local authorities is over 10 times that of any European comparator (and the US). Heseltine’s proposal would make this discrepancy even starker. Local government, local democracy and public participation work best when authorities reflect the local communities with which people identify. His proposed cull of local authorities is based on a belief in the superiority of a system of “unitary” councils which few other developed countries share. But the two-tier system is flourishing in London and other mayoral-led combined authorities, with a sensible division of labour between, for example, Greater Manchester and its constituent districts, including Rayner’s own Tameside.
Heseltine’s proposals could see the disappearance of councils such as Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool, and the term “local government” would become a total misrepresentation. There is no consistent or conclusive evidence that large unitary authorities save money, but there is more consistent evidence of the damage done to local democracy.
A massive local government reorganisation would be an unnecessary and counterproductive distraction from the task of enabling local governments to again make a major contribution to the quality of life of local residents, after years of austerity-fuelled neglect. So please, secretary of state, do not go down that road.
Steve Leach and Colin Copus
Co-authors, The Strange Demise of the Local in Local Government
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