The English Devolution White Paper leaves little doubt about the scale of the new unitary authorities the government intends to create: a population of half-a-million is required.
We now have an idea where this magical figure came from provided in an answer to a Freedom of Information question asked of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) by the District Councils' Network. The response places the source with a PWC report for the County Councils Network produced in 2020. The response also mentioned another document, but bizarrely claims a public interest defence for not providing that source as it would damage civil servants ability to operate in a safe space. We are left wondering what could be so devastatingly dangerous about local government size as to need the public to be protected from the source of the magic number: Maybe it's the 1969 Redcliffe-Maud report!
Whitehall is acting on the magical quality of an optimum population figure with no attention to contrary evidence suggesting bigger is not better. For the largest shire counties in England: Kent, Essex, Lancashire, Hertfordshire, Hampshire and Devon, the implication is they will be split into three or four separate units. For smaller shire counties, including Warwickshire, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, who knows; might they be merged at some point to be consistent about the magic number?
If the starting population is half-a-million what are the survival chances of unitaries with populations below 200,000 and the 21 MBCs with populations below 300,000 including Oldham (a totally unacceptable lower MCHLG limit, one assumes)? The centre is faced with a mass of inconsistencies, reflecting the half-a-million guideline/ commitment and the implications of the LGR agenda and White Paper.
What about the implications of the magic number for existing unitary authorities outside shire counties? If a unitary population of half-a-million is required, then for consistency similar sized should be introduced in existing combined authority areas.
In the 36 metropolitan districts, excluding Birmingham (1.16 million), and Leeds (822,000) size range varies from 566,000 (Sheffield), to 148,000 (South Tyneside) with Oldham at 242,000. In the existing 62 unitary authorities, population ranges from 624,000 (North Yorkshire) to 41,000 (Rutland). The pre-1996 unitary authorities have been much larger than those designated from 2006 onwards: eight exceeded 400,000 and seven are between 300,000 and 400,000. Several categorised as unitaries following the abolition of Avon and Humberside and the ‘big city' grouping (e.g. Nottingham, Derby and Leicester) had similar populations, but twenty-two unitaries have populations of below 200,000, including Hartlepool (94,000), Darlington (109,000), Torbay (139,000), the Isle of Wight (140,000) and Rutland, punching its weight at 41,000.
If the starting population is half-a-million what are the survival chances of unitaries with populations below 200,000 and the 21 MBCs with populations below 300,000 including Oldham (a totally unacceptable lower MCHLG limit, one assumes)? The centre is faced with a mass of inconsistencies, reflecting the half-a-million guideline/ commitment and the implications of the LGR agenda and White Paper.
If half-a-million is the magic number what will happen to existing authorities located within or adjacent to them? There are several such authorities around shire counties, almost all designated at the end of the 1996 Banham/Cooksey Commissions: Southend (180,000) and Thurrock (177,000) within Essex: Medway (283,000) north Kent: Torbay (139,000) within Devon: Blackburn with Darwen (156,000): Herefordshire (189,000) adjacent to Worcestershire: North Lincs (170,000) and North East Lincs (153,000), Greater Grimsby and Greater Scunthorpe respectively: not to mention our much-loved Isle of Wight (140,000) and Rutland (41,000).
These unitaries have viability through community identity and being ‘real places', or reasonable approximations with residents highly likely to identify with them. It is hard to imagine any surviving the expectations of a half-a-million+ limit. All would be subsumed within meaningless conglomerations of bits attached from surrounding counties. What would become of Torbay, Blackburn with Darwen, Southend and others? Because of their arbitrary division into ‘bite- sized' units, they would lose all meaning as authorities based on real places, a concern identified by almost all of the Banham/Cooksey Commission authorities.
What would be the outcome within the existing or designated former metropolitan county council areas, where unitary authorities have populations below half-a-million? Which, when created in 1974 had a degree of logic acknowledging the importance of community identity. All the ‘big cities'- Manchester, Liverpool Leeds etc.- fit this criterion and overall, the MBCs have a viable sense of community. The centre's problem is few meet the half-a-million requirements, which, if it is to be applied throughout the remaining part of shire England must surely be applied, for consistency sake, elsewhere. Only seven existing MBCs have populations above 350,000. Of those that remain, there are 14 with populations between Sandwell (344,000) and Wolverhampton (268,000), with the remainder spanning Barnsley (246,000) and South Tyneside (148,000). How will the MCHLG deal with such discrepancies?
In territories outside the six MCC and shire counties, what should be the outcome where existing unitary authorities have populations of less than half-a-million?
There are more major inconsistencies and dilemmas for MCHLG and ministers here. The unitary authorities established by the Banham/Cooksey Commission in 1996, following an adherence to the importance of retaining a viable community identity, have much smaller populations than the MBCs and those unitary authorities established from 2006 onwards. Falling within the former category are the five urban-based authorities in Teesside, with an average population is 124,000. Within the now extinct county of Berkshire six unitary authorities established in 1996 have an average of 170,000.
Are we to see a sizeable number of small unitary authorities (viable in terms of community identity) to be abolished across the country? Or has the plan just not been thought through?
Does the centre's assumption that setting up combined authorities with elected mayors and then extending the process to cover unitary councils throughout the shire areas mean there is ‘unitary' local government? In the six MCCs, there are mayors, working with a group of council leaders in essentially a two-tier system of democratic elected government. Why not elsewhere?
The biggest irony of the whole sorry business is that despite claims to be a ‘devolution' paper, what we have it is a centralisation agenda dividing local government into delivery units, manageable by civil servants, with a veneer of local democracy through elected mayors. Centralisation has long been the agenda of MHCLG/Treasury and they finally have a Government buying into it on spurious grounds of growth and efficiency, while being blind and deaf to the consequences. If carried through it would be the death of local democracy as we know it and the further marginalization of existing councillors. A magic population number for local government is a fallacy and our councils are being destroyed because of it.
Dennis Reed is former chief executive of the Local Government information Unit, Steve Leach is emeritus professor at De Montfort University and Colin Copus is emeritus professor at De Montfort University and visiting professor at Ghent University
