Part 5 – The Kerslake Review.

In 2012, assessing the scale of central government cuts both already implemented and to come, Sir Albert Bore spoke of the end of local government as we know it; he was not exaggerating. Assailed on all sides, Birmingham, a model for municipal government in the Victorian and Edwardian era, was struggling even to deliver basic services, whilst recurrent failures in the city’s children’s services department, the mysterious Trojan Horse affair and the single status equal pay ruling (whereby around £1bn in back pay was owed to certain categories of current and former council employees) had raised concerns in central government. In response a commission chaired by Sir Robert Kerslake was set up to investigate by the then Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles.

Bore’s micro management style, the relationship between leader and chief executive and that between councillors and officers, how the council works with partner organisations and it’s wider corporate culture, all were subjected to intense scrutiny and received much criticism in the ensuing report. Yet Kerslake went further, suggesting councillor numbers be reduced (perhaps from 120 to 100, subject to a review of boundaries by the Local Government Boundary Commission) and recommending replacement of the present electoral cycle, whereby a third of council seats are contested in three years out of four (with no elections in the fourth year) to a system of all out elections staged every four years, the change to take effect from 2018. Thus, despite a rising population, the size of Birmingham’s wards (averaging around 10,000 people each, roughly twice the size of wards in Coventry) is set to increase. Most remaining councillors will be redefined as community leaders with their power to influence and affect citywide decisions and to hold Cabinet members to account considerably reduced, as they are expected to concentrate on issues relating to their wards. Yet reducing the input of councillors as regards the wider city risks fracturing a crucial line of accountability between voters and senior councillors, potentially threatening a democratic deficit of critical proportions.

Implementation of Kerslake’s recommendations is being overseen by an ‘Independent Birmingham Improvement Panel’, with the threat that should insufficient progress be made by spring 2016 Whitehall-appointed Commissioners could be brought in to run the city, with the democratically elected Leader and Cabinet ousted by central government.

However Kerslake’s recommendations are stifled by their need to follow the Conservative government’s agenda as regards local authorities. Thus reference to working better with partner organisations essentially means the business community, rather than those in the voluntary or third sector. Yet reducing the number of ward councillors along with their influence lessens the likelihood that they will be capable of holding Birmingham’s civic leaders to account. A real overhaul of Birmingham’s moribund political system might ask why the Green Party, UKIP or even independent candidates are never elected when such results are regular occurrences in other parts of the West Midlands, and how more stimulating and radical political agendas might be encompassed in a democratic local framework. Sadly, the notion of encouraging a refreshing political activism is likely anathema to a government who seem to fear, rather than embrace, an enlivened political landscape.

Ultimately, there remains a strong argument that if central government loosened its often suffocating grip on local authorities, swept away a great many of the rules and regulations under which councils are forced to operate, trusted them more and micro managed less, local democracy might flourish.

West Midlands Combined Authority and Metro Mayor

Even when George Osborne giveth, read the small print and you’ll notice that he also taketh away. As the Chancellor approves a devolution deal for the region, so the lines of democratic accountability of the newly forming West Midlands Combined Authority and Metro Mayor are either far from clear in the case of the former, or troubling as regards the latter. Meanwhile, some powers currently residing with local councils will be subsumed into the new body, with extensive new powers allocated to the business focussed and non-elected Local Enterprise Partnerships.

So by 2018, the framework of local democracy in Birmingham will have been decided not by the electorate it is meant to serve, but by central government. The size of our council and its wards, the frequency of elections, the rôle of councillors, the make up and powers of the regional wide authority, all will have been determined by Westminster, with the most powerful post of all, that of Metro Mayor, imposed specifically against the wishes of many of the region’s electorate as expressed in mayoral referendums as recently as 2012. It will be a post lacking even the basic democratic safeguards, curbs and accountability that the Mayor of London must accept.

However, this is to misinterpret the intentions behind a form of devolution that is primarily designed to ensure decision taking is swift, business orientated and Whitehall compliant, George Osborne’s rubber stamp man as it were. There will be no room for complex, messy debate or for the input and influence of public opinion other than at the most superficial level. Public engagement, once channelled through the West Midlands County Council, will in future be expressed via a four yearly beauty contest or by the lobbying of council leaders. Expect those individuals and organisations with status and power to be listened to more avidly than those without. Compare that with Scotland, a region with a similar sized population to that of the West Midlands Combined Authority, where an assembly determined by proportional representation has reinvigorated politics, and which confers power to every rung on the ladder of society.

But not here. Birmingham, still a place where things are done to us, rather than one where we consent to their being done.

Read Part 1 here

Read Part 2 here

Read Part 3 here

Read Part 4 here