What could a new ‘super-authority’ mean for people in Cambridgeshire?

The government has been accused of focusing on “moving the deck chairs of local government”, rather than tackling issues such as the “crisis in social care”.

Local leaders have shared concerns about government proposals to get rid of existing councils in Cambridgeshire and potentially create a new unitary authority covering the whole county.

Some council leaders said they feared the changes could make local government more remote and harder for people to access.

Earlier this month a letter was sent to all of the council leaders in the county from Jim McMahon OBE MP, the Minister Of State For Local Government And English Devolution, asking the councils to work together to create a proposal for local government reorganisation.

The authorities have been given a deadline of March 21 to submit an initial plan.

Currently, most of Cambridgeshire has a two-tier local government structure, where some services are provided by Cambridgeshire County Council – such as highways maintenance, social care, and education – and other services are provided by district councils – including bin collections, planning and licensing.

Peterborough City Council is already a unitary council, meaning it provides all of the services that are split between the county council and district councils in the rest of the area.

The letter to council leaders asked for a single proposal for local government reorganisation in the area to be put together and suggested this could include one or more new unitary councils.

It said: “This is a once in a generation opportunity to work together to put local government in your area on a more sustainable footing, creating simpler structures for your area that will deliver the services that local people and businesses need and deserve.”

The minister of state said feedback on the initial proposal will be provided, with a final full proposal expected to be submitted by November 28.

Some concerns have been raised about what the move to fewer larger councils could mean for people in Cambridgeshire.

Councillor Bridget Smith (Liberal Democrat), leader of South Cambridgeshire District Council, said she could not understand why when there was a “crisis in social care and health” that the government was focusing more on “moving the deckchairs of local government around”.

She said: “Local government is not broken, social care is broken, this seems like an enormous distraction.”

Cllr Smith said councils had “no choice other than to follow the government’s wishes to create a unitary council”.

She said all of the councils were working together to try and “identify what will work best” for people in the area, but said she did not know what the proposals could look like at this stage, whether it could be “one massive unitary council”, or a series of smaller unitary councils.

Cllr Smith said she believed the government was being “unrealistic” about the savings it hoped to see from the changes, as she stressed that local government reorganisation “costs a lot of money”.

She added that she personally believed the changes being requested could make local government “less local”, with potentially fewer councillors responsible for more services and covering a larger area.

Cllr Smith said the “vast majority” of councillors were “community champions” first and said she believed there was a risk that having fewer councillors could “leave a deficit in communities”.

She also said greater workloads for councillors could potentially have a “negative impact on the diversity of councillors”, as she said she could see them being “forced into being professional politicians”, making it harder for some people to be a councillor.

Cllr Smith said: “How can we attract people who have a job, have caring responsibilities, possibly have their own health challenges, it just becomes far more difficult to retain any sort of diversity.

“The risk is that the demands are such and the remuneration so poor that councils become populated by mostly older and fairly wealthy people, as they are the only people with the time or money to allow them to do it. I do not think this is good for democracy.”

Cllr Smith added: “We will do the best we can for our residents in order to keep local government as local as possible, and as fit for purpose in meeting the needs of all our residents, but it is going to be much more challenging to do it.”

Councillor Anna Bailey (Conservative), leader of East Cambridgeshire District Council, shared some of Cllr Smith’s concerns about the impact moving to unitary councils could have on democracy.

Cllr Bailey said the move could “professionalise the role” with fewer councillors having to cover larger areas and cover a wider range of services.

She said this could see fewer people able to stand for election, which she said was a “dilution of local democracy”.

Cllr Bailey said the “basic premise” of a unitary council that is responsible for all services was “much more convenient” for people to understand. However, she said the geography and size of what could be created in Cambridgeshire was a “massive issue”.

The government’s devolution White Paper said unitary councils “must be the right size to achieve efficiencies” and said this would mean creating councils with a population of 500,000 or more.

The paper did state that exceptions to make sure new structures “make sense for an area” could be considered.

Cllr Bailey said: “East Cambridgeshire has just under 90,000 residents and will be expected to move to a geography of at least half-a-million make; this will make services more remote and less accessible.”

She added that she also had “very serious concerns” that people in her area could end up having to pay towards the debts of other councils if areas are joined together.

Cllr Bailey said she also “feared” that policies promoted by the existing district council’s administration, such as freezing its share of council tax for 11 years, could “disappear”.

Cllr Bailey said she would rather see the existing district councils made into unitary authorities, taking on some of the services currently provided by the county council, such as maintaining roads, which she said she believed they could ‘do a better job of’.

She suggested that other bigger services which need large-scale commissioning, such as adult social care and overseeing education, could be passed to the Combined Authority.

However, Cllr Bailey said she did not believe such a suggestion would “ever get a hearing” and raised concerns about the intentions behind the reorganisation.

She said: “I have concerns about democracy. This is all part of a government plan for devolution, but I believe it is less about devolution and about the government having puppets in the region it can talk to.”