a poisoned chalice? the re-constituted local government

A POISONED CHALICE? THE RE-CONSTITUTED LOCAL GOVERNMENTCOMMISSION

MICHAEL CLARKE

More than once the re-constituted Commission was said to have beenhanded a poisoned chalice. There was a high level of dissatisfaction andfrustration with the outcome of the first review; aspirations had beenknocked; there was serious criticism of methodology and practice; and, ofcourse, the original design of the review process was seen by many to havebeen flawed. Credibility was at a low ebb. As one senior chief executivesaid to me ‘There is no way in which this can be rescued, is there? Surelyyou will just end up with egg on your face?’

The auguries certainly were not good. It would have been difficult tofind a task which started with a more negative inheritance. However, evenif it were not where all of us on the Commission would have started from,we have ended up with a local government map which, for the most part,has a clear rationale to it. Despite the dire predictions, there is widespreadsupport for the results of the second Review.

My purpose here is to give some flavour of the nature of the secondReview and record the story of the way in which the Commission wentabout its business. Inevitably, it will be a personal and subjective view.Even at some months distance, I am too close to the process to provide thekind of external and neutral assessment which others have provided of thefirst round.

My involvement began in June 1995 with an approach from the Depart-ment of the Environment to see if I would be prepared to serve on a recon-stituted Commission. Having been a public critic of the review process andthe first Commission I was surprised at the invitation. However, it seemedto me that if this was a genuine attempt to tidy up some of the anomaliesof the first round it was to be taken seriously. I sought assurances that theexercise was serious, that its recommendations would be treated as such

Michael Clarke is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Birmingham.

Public Administration Vol. 75 Spring 1997 (109–118) Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street,Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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and that there was no hidden political agenda. The assurances were quicklyforthcoming and clear. Subsequent experience confirmed them.

The new Commission was smaller than its predecessor. Eight membersand a chairman were appointed. Four of the members continued from theBanham Commission: Professor Malcolm Grant (who became DeputyChairman); Ken Ennals (a retired civil servant, who sadly became ill duringthe Autumn and died at the year end and who was thus able only to takepart in some of the deliberations); Bob Scruton (an accountant and servingparish councillor); and David Thomas (retired Secretary of the old LocalAuthorities Conditions of Service Advisory Board). The other new memberswere Peter Brokenshire (a retired former director of management practiceat The Audit Commission and, before that, a local authority chiefexecutive); Helena Shovelton (National Chairman of the Citizen’s AdviceBureau and a member of the Audit Commission); and Norman Warner(former Director of Social Services with Kent County Council and seniorcivil servant in the Department of Health). Sir David Cooksey wasappointed Chairman. He was entering his final year as chairman of theAudit Commission and a well-known figure in local government, albeitwith a private sector (venture capital) background.

At the same time, Dr Bob Chilton was seconded from the Audit Com-mission, where he had been Director of Local Government Studies, to beChief Executive. He brought with him to the Commission one other seniormember of the Audit Commission staff, Greg Birdseye, as Director ofResearch – a new post in the organization and one designed to strengthenthe intellectual capacity of the Commission’s support. Sceptical observersnoted the predominance of Audit Commission links. Subsequent experiencesuggests that the main importance was of a group of people more or lessfamiliar with one another and able to work well together – but not at theexclusion of others, either Commission or staff members. It probably alsomade it easier to use the Audit Commission in the key task of scrutinizingthe financial content of council submissions and so defusing those differ-ences between districts and counties.

Events moved fast. On 29 June 1995 the secretary of state directed theCommission to review 21 district councils, with a requirement to submitrecommendations by 2 January 1996. The Commission launched its reviewon 5 July 1995 and submitted final recommendations on 19 December 1995.The logic behind the speed was to allow the draft orders for any new uni-tary authorities to be placed in time for their approval and shadow electionsto take place in May 1996. To start with, the local authorities involved werehighly critical of the tight deadlines; but their logic was gradually accepted,followed by a sense of relief that the process was going to be quickly outof the way.

The district councils to be reviewed were Basildon and Thurrock (Essex),Blackburn and Blackpool (Lancashire), Broxtowe, Gedling and Rushcliffe(Nottinghamshire), Dartford, Gravesham, Gillingham and Rochester upon

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Medway (Kent), Exeter (Devon), Gloucestershire, Halton and Warrington(Cheshire), Huntingdonshire and Peterborough (Cambridgeshire), Nor-thampton, Norwich (Norfolk), Spelthorne (Surrey) and Wrekin(Shropshire). Why these and not others? There were clearly some marginalcases left over from the first round (for example Warrington, Norwich,Peterborough) where there was a strong logic for looking again at theissues. Equally, however, there were a number of cases where politicalinterests from both major parties seemed the key factor. Huntingdonshire,the clutch of Nottinghamshire districts, Halton, The Wrekin and Spelthornedidn’t look as obvious as some places – Oxford and Ipswich, say – not onthe list.

The timetable for the Review fell out naturally from the requirements ofthe process. The first stage was for the councils under review to make theirsubmissions. We required these by early August 1995. The fact that therewere only a few weeks in which to prepare them was not as serious as itlooked. Most councils had known for some time that they were likely tohave to argue their case again, and, of course, they had all been there beforein one way or another. The Commission then had to assess those sub-missions and to take account of what the respective county councils andother interested parties were saying before determining a set of draft rec-ommendations. These were published on 26 September 1995, with a sixweek period for formal consultation and then a reconsideration of the draftrecommendations before the submission of final recommendations to thesecretary of state.

At draft recommendation stage we proposed ten new unitary councilsincluding two which involved mergers (Dartford with Gravesham and Gil-lingham with Rochester upon Medway). At the draft stage we took the viewthat it would be difficult for a negative recommendation to be overturnedsubsequently. We therefore erred on the side of positive recommendationwhere we were in doubt. In two cases, Northampton and the merger ofDartford with Gravesham, we clearly signalled the importance of theconsultation needing to demonstrate support for our proposition if it wasto survive.

In the event, we judged that there was insufficient support in Nor-thampton and thus dropped that recommendation at the final stage. In thecase of Dartford and Gravesham it was also clear that our rationale (towhich I will return) was not acceptable. The final recommendations there-fore affected nine councils and produced a suggested eight new unitaryauthorities (Blackburn, Blackpool, Gillingham with Rochester, Halton, War-rington, Peterborough, Thurrock, and The Wrekin). The secretary of statesubsequently accepted all our recommendations, and draft orders havebeen approved by Parliament.

The Review was significantly different from its predecessor. That was acomprehensive review of the structure of local government county bycounty. Circumstances had changed by July 1995 and the new task was


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more specific. To start with, 38 unitary councils had been agreed. This cre-ated a new local government map and established a series of precedentswhich could not be ignored. Moreover, the new review was of specific dis-tricts. The arguments about unitary status for a specific town are differentfrom those about the appropriate arrangements for a whole county. Andthen, of course, there was new Guidance from the secretary of state.

The framework within which the Commission worked derived from theLocal Government Act 1992, requiring it to have regard for ‘the identitiesand interests of local communities and seeking effective and convenientlocal government’. This was supplemented by the secretary of state’s Policyand Procedure Guidance. Although similar to the Guidance issued to the Ban-ham Commission, there were significant differences. The Guidance was setagainst the background of the outcome of the first round. The Commissionneeded to have regard to the viability of the county area which would beleft outside a potential unitary. The Guidance made clear that there mustbe assumed to be a continuation of standards and quality in direct serviceprovision, but that the issue of financial costs and benefits had to be seenin relation both to the district and county.

The Guidance also signalled the importance of shared arrangements forparticular functions where a satisfactory structure was unlikely to be achie-ved without them. Most significantly, it required the Commission to haveregard to economic regeneration. This particular provision attracted a lotof attention and caused the Commission much thought, leading it to com-mission research to assess the available evidence. Our conclusion was thatunitary status did not, of itself, make for success in economic re-generationbut that unitary authorities are well placed to manage the consequent pro-cesses of change and development and to cope with the broader social andservice consequences of economic re-generation. (We noted that localgovernment is inclined to undervalue this role compared to the apparentglamour of trying to attract investment).

The Commission added its own considerations as it developed its work.In an Overview Report at the draft recommendation stage it developed, inparticular, the concept of centrality. While there was nothing novel in thisit served to draw attention to a number of factors.

• geographic – reflecting the statutory consideration of convenience.• socio-economic and cultural – reflecting the statutory concern for com-

munity interests.• functional – reflecting the statutory concern for effectiveness.

Centrality became one of our key considerations in making judgementsabout unitary status or the status quo. The extent to which a place like (forus) Exeter or Gloucester remained central to its county and surroundingarea or whether it was more peripheral (for example, Warrington orBlackburn) or had, indeed, outgrown its local centrality to be somethingelse was crucial.



Taken together, the requirements of the Act, the Guidance and the Com-mission’s own elaboration produced a set of factors which required to becarefully weighed. Not surprisingly, there was no single case where thearguments were overwhelming and all in one direction. Perhaps for thisreason as much as any other we laid great stress on evidence and argumen-tation.

Before reflecting on the evidence we had before us, something should besaid about the decision to publish an Overview Report (in addition to theseparate, detailed county reports) at the draft recommendation stage. Thetightness of the timetable required us to publish all our draft recommen-dations together. We quickly came to the view that, although we were deal-ing with them at the same time, we needed to publish them county bycounty to make them easily accessible. We then faced a question aboutwhether we should publish something which would spell out the rationalebehind the separate draft recommendations. To cut a long story short, hav-ing had an initial draft of what became the Overview Report, we werequickly convinced that the advantages of publishing were much greaterthan the disadvantages.

To the surprise of many we therefore published a separate, over-archingreport. In retrospect I have no doubt that this was an important decisionand a key part of the process. Indeed, it now seems surprising that we everpaused at the possibility. (That we did is evidence of the extent to whichthe first Commission had got things wrong and opened the way to judicialreview). In the report we were able to set out the rationale and purposewhich lay behind our deliberations and our draft recommendations. As aresult we were seen to have approached the issues with intellectual rigourand to have set the whole within a context underpinned by its own logic.There was no question of anyone being able to say we had been inconsistentor that we had applied different criteria in different cases. Of course, therewere criticisms of detail in our reasoning and our approach, but what isinteresting is that nobody seriously took issue with the assembly of thearguments and certainly nobody attempted to challenge our stance in thecourts.

The evidence which we had for our considerations came from the 21authorities, the accompanying submissions from county councils and otherinterested parties. There was then the material from the formal consultationprocess. To this we added mori survey data. Representations were alsoreceived from Members of Parliament, Members of the House of Lords andLords Lieutenant. We had no shortage of written evidence. The Com-mission received nearly 44,000 letters from individuals, organizations andother interested parties, in addition to the 38,000 standard letters, postcards,response slips and petition signatures. At the consultation stage there weremore representations for any single county than there were in the entiredeliberations of the Redcliffe-Maud Royal Commission!

At the time of the initial submissions and again during the consultation


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period, meetings were arranged between commissioners and the districtcouncils under review, their counties, their neighbouring districts and localorganizations. These enabled explanation of the process, and later, amplifi-cation of the draft recommendations. They also served to demonstrate animportant difference between the first and second Commissions. In the firstreview there were ‘lead’ commissioners for each county area. This seemedto create some confusion about whether lead commissioners or the Com-mission as a whole were making decisions. Learning from this, we formedpanels of commissioners to have oversight of the process in different partsof the country and to be responsible for liaison at consultative meetings.The regional panels, as far as possible, had overlapping membership andwere at pains to make clear that the Commission would collectively makejudgements and agree on recommendations. That we did.

The volume of material coming from local government itself was large.Taken overall, I was disappointed at the way many local authorities perfor-med. Too often, argumentation seemed to be of poor quality and the stra-tegic thrust of a case either missed or lost. More than once, confronted byan apparently strong case, I found myself willing either the writer orspeaker to do better. While it did not stop us collecting the evidence andweighing argument, poor presentation did not help.

What was the impact of the way arguments were put? There is no doubtthat strong and committed political leadership able to articulate its case,working in tandem with a good chief executive and senior officer supportwas important. However, in the final analysis, the evidence we were judg-ing comprised more than those presentations and I think it fair to say thatthe day was never swayed simply by performance.

In considering the evidence submitted, we had to try and distinguishbetween the soundly based and the product of campaigning. We were, ofcourse, aware that many councils would be orchestrating or supportingcampaigns for change or for the status quo. We consistently made clearthat we would not be pushed by such campaigning and that we would doour utmost to discern its effects. There is a fine line to be drawn betweenpublicity and the promotion of public debate on the one hand and therunning of a campaign on the other. There was obviously plenty of theformer but I think we saw some examples of the latter. We tried to ensurethat the process and its outcomes were not distorted.

It was in order to try and reach some understanding of the nature oflocal influence that we extended the depth of the mori survey conductedat the consultation stage. While we deliberately eschewed the much-maligned leaflet campaign of the Banham Commission with its opportunityto ‘vote’ for a particular option, public opinion was, nevertheless,important. In testing it we tried to get beyond the superficial. Extendedinterviews were used to try and establish how people had reached the con-clusions they had and where they had got their information from.

We had a suspicion that the public was heartily sick of local government



reviews and indifferent to questions about structure. The evidence suggestsa much higher level of interest than we would have guessed. However,despite this, it is worth noting that 35 per cent of respondents claimed neverto have heard of the Review (even if that did not stop them expressingviews about it!) It was also interesting to note that 76 per cent of our respon-dents claimed to have voted in the last local government election. Eitherthe sample was very peculiar indeed – or care is needed in the analysis ofsuch data.

The mori survey is discussed elsewhere in this volume. What wasimportant to the Commission was that there were crucial variations fromplace to place, giving us an insight into the nature and strength of localfeeling. We made clear at the outset that the mori surveys – and publicopinion in general – would be only one of the factors weighed in the finalbalance. That remained the case to the end. Broadly speaking, however,the mori findings confirmed the direction of argument being formulatedanyway. Our real interest was in using it to see whether new evidence orargument was brought to life.

Throughout the process, relationships between the Commission and theprincipal national stakeholders were obviously important – particularlywhen previous history was taken into account. The respect with whichDavid Cooksey was held by both the doe and the local authority associ-ations helped. He would have been first to resist undue pressure but wasabsolutely clear, particularly in relation to the local authority associations,that views must be heard and carefully considered. Starting from a positionwhere the associations had been negative and highly critical of the Com-mission, the situation was quickly reversed. Both Robin Wendt and Geof-frey Filkin (Secretaries of the Association of County Councils and DistrictCouncils respectively) observed more than once that they were well satis-fied with the integrity of the Commission’s process and with the intellectualrigour brought to the task.

Links with the local authorities themselves were also important. Com-mission staff (organized into area teams and having clear responsibilitiesfor the different districts under review) kept open communication with thecouncils concerned. While this had been the case for much of the firstreview, there had then been the complication of the way the Commissionitself had worked, the criticism which built up and so on. This time thereseemed to be much greater satisfaction with those relationships.

Standing back and taking the process overall, there are a number of keypoints worth emphasising. First, chairmanship: I can make no first hand com-parisons between the two Commissions, but the experience of the reconsti-tuted Commission left me in no doubt about the skills and characteristicsrequired of somebody chairing a Commission of Inquiry. It is easy toassume that it is just like chairing any other body. It is not. There is apremium on a style which enables the members to reach a common mindand which ensures that, in doing so, all the evidence is carefully weighed


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and that argument has intellectual rigour. David Cooksey had these skillsin high order. This served the Commission in good stead. Chairmanshipof such bodies needs to be taken seriously and there are lessons which canbe learned for other similar undertakings.

Secondly, there is the issue of the way in which the Commission operatedand the extent to which it was able to achieve consensus. In this case, theChairman was at pains to encourage discussion and debate until there wasa common mind. Of course, there were issues which some of us felt morestrongly about than others. But there is no doubt that our recommendationsand their underlying arguments were all the stronger for that painstakingeffort. This was helped by an initial twenty-four hour residential meetingwhere the Commission explored the way in which it was going to approachits work. It was further helped by ensuring we met often enough for busi-ness not to be hurried and to allow for debate and for disagreement to betalked through.

A third issue is about confidentiality. The first Commission had sufferedfrom regular leaking of its deliberations and decisions and, sometimes, theviews of its individual members – or so it seemed from a reading from thelocal government press. From the outset we agreed that it was essential thatour internal discussions remained confidential. We sought the assistance ofstaff and maintained complete confidentiality until the end of the process,despite the attempts of the press to make it otherwise. Only one allegednotable ‘leak’ appeared along the way. That was sufficiently inaccurate forus to know we had maintained our record.

Fourthly, the role of the chief executive and staff needs to be noted. Thismay seem self-evident but they are a key part of the whole. Bob Chiltonbrought with him from the Audit Commission a reputation for impartialityand integrity, and for a rigour and thoroughness which enabled him to setclear standards to the organization. As commissioners, we took an earlydecision that we were not going to pursue a hands-on, executive role butwere there to weigh, consider and judge. It was left to the staff to assembledata and arguments for us to debate, evaluate and approve or amend. Thatrole we maintained. The generally agreed high standard of the publisheddocumentation is testament to the importance of the office in this kind ofprocess.

The threat of legal challenge constantly hung over the Commission. Thehistory of the first review had been punctuated by such moves. Asimportant as the fact that there was no legal challenge was the disciplineinspired by the threat. At each stage we were conscious of the possibilitiesand at pains to ensure that our position and arguments were not open tochallenge leading. This led to regular recourse to the Treasury Solicitor –an unsung but necessary player in the review process. The threat of chal-lenge was a more significant influence than any of us would probably havethought at the beginning.

The sixth point is related and that is to reiterate the importance of the



emphasis on evidence and argumentation. Our role was to see collected therelevant data and evidence from which arguments could be formulated andjudgements made. We stuck rigorously to this approach in circumstanceswhere prejudice or conviction could easily have played a dominant part.The political culture of the 1980s and the impact of conviction politics hadmeant that this important approach to inquiry in British public adminis-tration often seemed to have been left behind. Careful enquiry as anapproach to this sort of constitutional issue, where passions are easilyaroused and answers difficult to find, cannot be over-estimated.

The eighth issue is about the balance between contemporary and futureneeds. While we were charged with making recommendations about a localgovernment system which would last for some time, we were inevitablyreceiving evidence about the present and making judgements about whatis. But is that right? The dilemma is seen with greatest clarity in the caseof Dartford and Gravesham. Here were two district councils without theslightest interest in joint unitary status, but across whose boundaries liesEbbsfleet. This is not only to be the site of an international station on theChannel Tunnel rail-link, but also the location of major development,including a massive new shopping and leisure complex.

It seemed to us that, if these developments were to happen, then theywould be well served by a single unitary authority, which would be in aposition to manage the consequences of the development (otherwise frag-mented across two district councils and a county council). The consultationphase demonstrated that the influence of the present was overwhelmingand that there was little support for our argument. We therefore felt con-strained to recommend the status quo to the secretary of state. The reasonsfor that conclusion are clear; time alone will tell whether it was right.

Lastly, right up to the end, the process of review suffered from therehaving been inadequate general debate about the concept of the unitaryauthority. For those of us who criticized the original approach to the reviewand the assertions about the merits of unitary government, this had beena vital missing link. Although we tried to develop our own understandingas a Commission, our task would have been easier (and, maybe even theresults of the whole review different) if there had been wider debate andbetter understanding. Arguments about simplicity of structure and clarityof accountability are matched by the limitations which come from signifi-cant local functions being outside local government, by constitutional andpractical arguments about the value of checks and balances, and by differ-ent services and responsibilities being appropriate to different scales ofoperation. Conviction and mere assertion are no substitute for reasonedargument and judgement.

While it is unlikely that a future Commission would find itself in theextraordinary position of undertaking a clearing-up operation, these gen-eral points offer some useful lessons for other, similar, exercises. The re-constituted Commission’s approach was obviously conditioned by the cir-


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cumstances of the first Commission and the government’s desire to put aline under the Review process as quickly as possible. If both Commissionsare taken together, the Review is generally agreed to have had major short-comings and to have been flawed from the start. Taken out of context, thework of the re-constituted Commission looks highly partial (a limited andstrange mixture of councils being reviewed), constrained (by the outcomesof the first Commission and the secretary of state’s rules) and rushed (byan imposed, tight timetable). Taken in context, its work and results havereceived very little serious criticism. Lest this sound complacent, it is fairto say that, however grudgingly at first, councils under review, other stake-holders and more distant observers have been open in their view that, inalmost impossible circumstances, it was not the poisoned chalice it seemed.

REFERENCES

Department of the Environment. 1995. Policy and procedure guidance to the Local Government Commission forEngland. London: doe.

—. 1995. Final recommendations on the future of local government. Report to the Secretary of State for theEnvironment (Dec.). London: hmso.

Local Government Commission for England. 1995. The 1995 review of 21 districts in England, Overview Report(Sept.) London: hmso.

Date received 30 September 1996. Date accepted 27 November 1996.


a poisoned chalice? the re-constituted local government

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