Councils facing reorganisation send taxpayers £2m bill for consultancy fees
A turf war between councils facing reorganisation means local taxpayers are footing consultancy fees that could run to millions of pounds.
Housing, Communities and Local Government minister Robert Jenrick last week gave the go-ahead to consultations over the reorganisation of Cumbria, North Yorkshire and Somerset councils.
Each of the counties consists of a two-tier form of local government with both district and county councils. The system was created by the last Tory-led local government reorganisation in 1974, which swept away the old one-tier Cumberland and Westmorland in Cumbria. They were replaced with 7 councils in Cumbria alone, each with their own chief executives, management teams and roles not understood by the population as a whole.
The aim now is to save money by forcing the rural councils to become unitary authorities and give them a single voice to fight their corners in the pandemic recovery scrap for cash.
But the current councils cannot agree on how to go about achieving the government’s aims and the bill for internal fighting is likely to run to millions of pounds.
The current Cumbria County Council argues for One Cumbria, which would see Cumbria’s existing seven councils replaced with one new Council “allowing for rapid and efficient transition to focus on transformation, delivery and provide a strong foundation for a future.
But the six district authorities want different solutions, reflecting the size of Cumbria and the fact England’s highest mountain range cuts it in two.
Carlisle and Eden (based in Penrith) want to join Allerdale, based on Workington and Keswick, in a north-south split. Allerdale and Copeland, based on Whitehaven, want to merge with Carlisle for an east-west split.
Most radically of all Barrow and South Lakeland want to join Lancaster, currently in Lancashire, to create a Morecambe Bay Council, like the popular ITV series called The Bay.
These three councils plan to spend £2 million on consultants over the next few years now that the Government has fired the starting pistol on the consultation.
Advertising on the local government procurement site, The Chest, the councils say their consultants would “enable the Councils to design the requirements for the subsequent transition stages”.
They added: “For the purposes of The Public Contract Regulations the value of this framework will be £2million, however no minimum or maximum value will be guaranteed, and the Councils reserve the right to use other consultants for work related to this project.”
At a zoom meeting just before the Government’s announcement (on Wednesday, February 17), the leaders of the three councils – two Labour and one Liberal Democrat – revealed they had already spent £80,000 each on the consultation.
The leader of South Lakeland District Council, Councillor Giles Archibald, said the Government had given the authorities just nine weeks to come up with a business case and the councils didn’t have the time or resources to comply.
Local leaders were told last summer that devolution in North Yorkshire could not happen unless the existing two-tier system of local government was abolished. Currently some services are carried out by the county council and others by seven district councils.
North Yorkshire county council has submitted a proposal for one authority covering the whole county, while district leaders want two authorities split down the A1M, with York merged into an authority with Ryedale, Selby and Scarborough.
Somerset County Council, like Cumbria, proposes “One Somerset”, replacing itself and the four non-metropolitan districts with a single unitary authority.
The four district councils have created a rival proposal, known as "Stronger Somerset", where the county and district councils would be replaced by two unitary authorities.
The Government’s consultation period will run for 8 weeks until Monday 19 April. Subject to Parliamentary approval, any new unitary council to be fully operational from April 2023.
