London super-council ‘could save 100m a year’
Author: BBC News |
Three Conservative London councils have announced plans that could see them merge all their services and create the UK’s first “super-council”.
Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, and Westminster say the move could save 50m to 100m a year.
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has backed the plans and wants other councils to follow.
But critics argue a wholesale merger would damage the local provision of services and standards would fall.
They say fewer staff would be trying to cover a bigger area.
Hammersmith and Fulham leader Stephen Greenhalgh admitted there would be “significant reductions” in staff and that the spending cuts meant jobs could not be safeguarded.
Under the proposal, each authority would retain its political identity with its own elected leaders and councillors.
‘Absolute guarantee’
Efforts are already under way to merge the three children’s services departments, which cover education, but now the authorities are considering whether to go further.
The plans will be formally announced later and if they are adopted could create a local authority bigger than Glasgow or Leeds.
A series of working groups will be set up to look at ways of merging three main areas – environmental services, family services and corporate services.
The groups are due to report back by February next year and afterwards more detailed plans will be put out to public consultation.
There have been other examples of pooled resources – South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse district councils share a chief executive – but nothing on this scale.
In a joint statement, the councils’ leaders said the initiative would soon become the norm for local authorities looking to keep costs down while delivering quality services.
Colin Barrow (Westminster), Stephen Greenhalgh (Hammersmith and Fulham) and Sir Merrick Cockell (Kensington and Chelsea) said that potentially sharing every service was a way to “reduce duplication and drive out needless cost”.
‘Homogeneous blob’
Mr Greenhalgh told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he gave an “absolute guarantee” that merging and sharing services would not compromise the political sovereignty of the three councils.
He said: “There’s a lot of bureaucracy involved with delivering local services. You often find that of the 3 we spend, 1 is spent deciding what to do with the other two.
“This is about minimising that overhead, and we still have political sovereignty, still have the ability to choose how we spend the money locally.”
He added that the councils were not trying to create a “homogeneous blob” but were just being more efficient about the choice of services received.
When it was announced earlier this year that work was under way to merge children’s services departments – responsible for education, social care and child protection – across the three councils, critics warned that democracy would suffer if schools were not run locally.
Paul Dimoldenberg, leader of the Labour group of Westminster City Council, said: “There are huge accountability issues with this plan.
“Parents who want to complain about their child’s education will not know who to complain to.”
The councils reject accusations that local democracy will suffer under a merger, saying the move would make management savings but not cut back councillors, ensuring accountability to the public was retained.