Surrey confirms plans to raise council tax by 15%, What would you vote if West Berks did the same? Options

[Biker1]

Personally I would not vote for this unless I could scrutinise current council spending and be convinced that current taxes were being spent in what I would consider the right places and that the necessary economies had been made.
Comparing with a domestic situation, upon finding that your income did not meet your expenditure I find it unlikely that your employer would agree to a 15% pay rise?
You would instead have to reorganise your finances, yes?

[On the edge]

One other old call, which would would be quite sensible to resurrect right now, would be the restoration of a properly unitary County level authority and if we must, retain tightly bounded parish level councils. Whilst that wouldn't deliver any saving in operational staffs, it should eliminate much of the now unproductive and expensive middle management. In simple terms, an administrative authority for an area the size of Berkshire only needs one Director of Education, and so on. It's screamingly obvious, but then so is the reason its not even in consideration.

[blackdog]

One other old call, which would would be quite sensible to resurrect right now, would be the restoration of a properly unitary County level authority and if we must, retain tightly bounded parish level councils. Whilst that wouldn't deliver any saving in operational staffs, it should eliminate much of the now unproductive and expensive middle management. In simple terms, an administrative authority for an area the size of Berkshire only needs one Director of Education, and so on. It's screamingly obvious, but then so is the reason its not even in consideration.

There is a certain amount of this happening - I note, for instance, that West Berks building regulations are now handled by Wokingham. That said, the point about a 'Director of Education' is not as simple as you make out. We might for instance have a Director of Education and Children's Services in a smaller UA, but a Director of Education and a Director of Children's Service if we merged with a second UA. A bigger organistion does not necessarily have fewer staff to do the work.

Mind you with all the direction coming from Whitehall, I'm not convinced LAs have much of a role in education at all

[Simon Kirby]

Mind you with all the direction coming from Whitehall, I'm not convinced LAs have much of a role in education at all

Me neither. Neither am I convinced that local authorities have a role in trading standards, environmental health, social services, housing, waste collection, roads, planning, health and safety, and libraries. There is maybe a role for parish-level local government in the preparation of local plans, but the planning decisions themselves should be made exclusively by informed professionals with reference to those local plans.

The problem with local authorities is their board of management - councillors! Despite the Tory rhetoric quangos can be quite an effective way of delivering public services with national agencies working through local offices giving you local knowledge with all the benefits of economy of scale and depth of expertise, and despite the rhetoric of localism the majority of those services really require very few policy decisions, and for those that do, direct local democracy is quite possible now - we could for example be asked to vote annually on the service level for a range of services and the national agencies would then deliver those services locally to the standard agreed locally.

There'd still be a role for local political activists seeking to influence those service level choices, but it would end the nonsense of electing deciders to decide on our behalf when we're perfectly capable of deciding for ourselves.

[user23]

Me neither. Neither am I convinced that local authorities have a role in trading standards, environmental health, social services, housing, waste collection, roads, planning, health and safety, and libraries. There is maybe a role for parish-level local government in the preparation of local plans, but the planning decisions themselves should be made exclusively by informed professionals with reference to those local plans.

The problem with local authorities is their board of management - councillors! Despite the Tory rhetoric quangos can be quite an effective way of delivering public services with national agencies working through local offices giving you local knowledge with all the benefits of economy of scale and depth of expertise, and despite the rhetoric of localism the majority of those services really require very few policy decisions, and for those that do, direct local democracy is quite possible now - we could for example be asked to vote annually on the service level for a range of services and the national agencies would then deliver those services locally to the standard agreed locally.

There'd still be a role for local political activists seeking to influence those service level choices, but it would end the nonsense of electing deciders to decide on our behalf when we're perfectly capable of deciding for ourselves.

The opposite is happening, with local regions being able to decide more for themselves thanks to the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016.

[On the edge]

The opposite is happening, with local regions being able to decide more for themselves thanks to the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016.

The secret us in the text, the words 'some' and 'combined' tend to give it away. It's really an attempt to replicate the London model in the bigger conurbations particularly in the North. WBC dead in the water, clearly even HMG see it as too small to be viable even medium term.

Anyone wanting a physical illustration of the crass silliness of the existing system simply needs to consider why in the pretend County of Berkshire, two large public parks in close proximity are managed by two separate councils operating with separate staff from separate offices. Not sure even Lewis Caroll could have dreamed that up.

[user23]

The secret us in the text, the words 'some' and 'combined' tend to give it away. It's really an attempt to replicate the London model in the bigger conurbations particularly in the North. WBC dead in the water, clearly even HMG see it as too small to be viable even medium term.

Anyone wanting a physical illustration of the crass silliness of the existing system simply needs to consider why in the pretend County of Berkshire, two large public parks in close proximity are managed by two separate councils operating with separate staff from separate offices. Not sure even Lewis Caroll could have dreamed that up.

What I'm saying is, whilst you have a view local services should be managed nationally, actually the opposite is happening and more national services are being managed locally.