Whilst there may be one or two
new city mayors widespread enthusiasm for the model remains stubbornly elusive.
We will surely see much discussion about exactly why over the coming days.
This piece is instead about what
could happen next; what is a possible new dispensation for a period in which directly
elected Mayors have been largely given the thumbs-down but in which there
remains untapped enthusiasm for more devolution and on-going need for more
integration?
The arguments for greater
devolution and greater integration at both local and conurbation scale are
entirely separable from those about specific types of governance. Indeed, it
makes considerably more sense to match the form of governance to the functional
roles and responsibilities being sought than to make an ex ante decision about
the types of governance options that are available.
In responding to the mayoral
referendum results, Ministers have been saying that it should be for local
areas to decide how they want to be governed.
Yet at the moment, in line with
guided localism, people can only respond to questions set by the Government.
The rejection of mayors in many
parts of the country leaves some big questions:
- How will the city deals offering at least some
additional devolution of responsibilities (however unclear) now be taken
forward and will the Government move from the presumption of going further with
places which have a mayor or take their ball away?
-
How could the greater integration in decision making
that Mayors were intended to achieve now happen?
-
In the largest metropolitan areas the need for further development at conurbation level seems
clear and the problems with mayors for only small parts of these areas has always
been apparent but how is that to be achieved?
And as part of the answers to these
questions will the Government now facilitate the development of other options
apart from mayors as new forms of decision making?
It is not that the hands of the
Government are tied.
The Localism Act allows the
Secretary of State to establish other types of governance arrangement beyond the
existing models for the executive (mayors or leaders with cabinets) or committee
structures.
The largely unremarked section 9BA
which the Localism Act inserted into the Local Government Act 2000 allows the Secretary
of State to make regulations prescribing the arrangements that local
authorities may operate for and in connection with the discharge of their
functions.
Councils may ask the Government
to make such regulations if in their opinion the new arrangements would improve
the discharge of their functions.
There are many unanswered questions
about these provisions including the focus on the council alone rather than on
a broader set of functions at local level but they open up the possibility of a
wider range of new local governance arrangements.
A good move now would be for
Ministers to signal that they are prepared to make use of them to give impetus for some more experimentation that might better respond to needs at
local level.
That is not to overlook the
uphill struggle to make the arguments for change when people have generally
turned their backs on mayors. But it would be possible to make the whole mayoral
saga have some positive outcomes if there were now clear commitment to:
- the
need for more devolution from central to local and for more integration at
local level both in terms of principle and in terms of practice, particularly
given the very severe public expenditure climate
- a
positive response from Ministers to proposals for new governance models that
would be used to give them effect.
That’s where some effort could
now fruitfully be focused.
