A FEW days before Christmas, on December 16, Labour published a Devolution White Paper which set out radical plans to transform and consolidate local government through the creation of Unitary Authorities. Councils were given less than a month’s notice to decide whether they wanted to opt in or not, with the enticement of postponing the May county council elections in order, the argument went, to put in place the biggest change to local government since 1974, or indeed before.
County and other existing authorities have been asked to put forward proposals whereby they would combine into Strategic Authorities covering populations of at least 1.5million. These authorities could then choose to elect a mayor in May 2026. Within each Strategic Authority, Labour’s plan is to have Principal Authorities with at least 500,000 residents, replacing two tiers of local government in many places (e.g. county and district or boroughs), though leaving town and parish councils in place.
It takes little imagination to see that this so-called ‘devolution’ plan is a disastrous one for democracy, taking power away from smaller local areas and handing it to more centralised areas.
While some local government professionals saw this coming, most didn’t. Plans which were buried in the details of Labour’s election manifesto, and revealed only in a section of the Local Government Association’s review of the manifesto, were sprung on them. Significantly too, the White Paper was not preceded by a Green Paper, ensuring that minimal time was allowed for councils even to become aware of the proposed radical changes and to debate them. That it has come as a surprise to most citizens, especially the idea that May’s elections would be postponed, is an understatement. The time pressure imposed by Angela Rayner, the Cabinet Minister in charge, is unjustifiable. Along with the White Paper’s absence of detail it has created serious uncertainty and anxiety for councillors like myself.
For the rest of this article therefore I must focus on what I know – which is what it means for us in East Sussex where I am an Independent Bexhill-on-Sea town councillor and where the plan is that East and West Sussex will merge with Brighton and Hove.
This new super-area will have a population of around 1.7million. The Government’s inclusion of Brighton and Hove is ‘necessary’ (to them) for two reasons: it takes the combined population over the arbitrary and magic threshold of 1.5million that the proposals dictate, the justification being that ‘no island must be left out’ (i.e. Brighton and Hove could not go it alone). If this goes ahead, here in ‘Greater’ Sussex we’ll have an election for mayor next year followed by elections for an East Sussex Principal Authority in May 2027 or May 2028. The mayor will be able to appoint commissioners to work alongside the elected representatives from the Principal Authorities. The widely discredited office of the Police and Crime Commissioner would be absorbed into the new Authority. Exactly how it would work in practice is not clear. It smells of an elected dictatorship. The government, we are given to understand, will decide by the end of this week (Friday January 31) whether we can have county council elections this year or not. The need for these elections was hotly debated at an Extraordinary General Meeting of East Sussex County Council on January 9. The Greens staged a protest outside the council headquarters insisting that this year’s elections go ahead. However, depressingly, the final vote was 23 to 21 in favour of postponing the elections with the same decision taken in West Sussex. Interestingly those voting against postponement were Labour, Green, LibDem and Independents like me. So the 23 votes in favour of postponing people’s right to vote were, shockingly, the 21 Conservative councillors and two Independents who used to be Conservatives.
The consensus is that the Tories are worried they will lose their seats and want to cling to power. To this end they are happy to ease the path of change to less democracy over the next two years. Those councillors who end in position later this year (whether that be as a result of elections or those who have managed to stay in situ in the absence of a May vote) are the ones who will be setting one more annual budget and overseeing (agreeing or not to) the details of the transition to this new structure. Which is exactly the reason why these county elections must go ahead this year. Given the calculated lack of time for discussion to date, there must be an opportunity for some democratic input – and this can be provided only in the campaigns, debates and hustings in the run-up to the May elections. Of course what the majority of the cynical Conservative naysayers know full well is exactly what the opinion polls are suggesting – which is that the Conservatives would be losing seats in May, most likely to Reform UK.
What, though, of Labour’s justification for these changes? Their argument is that a single authority will be more efficient; that geographically larger authorities are a good thing. Of course, smaller areas risk the pesky interference of people like me who put local residents before party politics. Under the cover of the word ‘devolution’ there is little doubt that Labour’s motivation is centrist and they’d like to see the end of such local voices. The reality of this ‘devolution’ is decisions being taken by a handful of distant mayors who will belong to a grandly titled Council of Nations and Regions. Top down. At the moment many of us know who our local councillor is; we may even meet them in the street. Think of Labour’s most famous Mayors, Sir Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham, and be afraid! That is what’s ahead. Then what if the new mayors are politically aligned with the people elected to run the Principal Authorities? It spells the end of the ‘community’ councillor and boom time for career politicians eager to toe the party line; undermining working experience brought by councillors, especially independent and local party representatives.
Worse perhaps, the 1.5million threshold makes it far more likely that urban apparatchiks unfamiliar with town and country geography will become the decision-makers. References in the White Paper to ‘working at pace’ and ‘delivering growth’ parrot the same old excuses that civil servants dredged up to defend their proposed Northeye asylum-seekers’ accommodation site which we successfully fought at the Public Inquiry. We don’t believe them.
In the past few years the political landscape has become more varied, and that introduces the only ray of hope. Labour’s devolution plans to assert more centralised control with bland uni-party candidates may still come unstuck. Here in East Sussex, even if the May elections are cancelled it may not work as intended. It could backfire. I can see Reform winning a mayoral election and doing well in the Principal Authority elections. Can we rely on them then to introduce meaningful local democracy? That will be the question.
