Rearranging the pieces on the Oxfordshire cheeseboard
Charles de Gaulle famously asked “How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?” Keir Starmer is asking how you can govern a country with 246 varieties of local council.
France has 18 régions, which in turn are divided into départements, 101 in all. Add a few city (métropole) councils and that’s basically it.
England has (deep breath) 21 county councils, 164 district and city councils, 36 metropolitan borough councils, 62 unitary councils, and 32 London boroughs. It has 11 combined authorities, metro mayors, and a bespoke arrangement for London. There are special bodies to influence major decisions like transport and policing, each with their own boundaries (Local Enterprise Partnerships, Sub-National Transport Bodies, Integrated Care Boards, Police & Crime Commissioners).
Add to that informal co-operation arrangements between councils. South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse are best buddies, sharing offices and many staff. West Oxfordshire palled up with a bunch of Gloucestershire districts in the Ubico and Publica joint ventures, but then got cold feet on the latter. Cherwell jumped into bed with South Northamptonshire, but that fell apart when Northamptonshire County Council went bust; it then got hitched to Oxfordshire County Council, which lasted three years until a no-fault divorce. Oxford City flies alone, though uniquely, it does a lot of highway work that would usually be Oxfordshire County Council’s job.
Keir Starmer is wondering aloud whether this hotchpotch is really the most efficient way to run a cheese shop country. He is not the first.
Vive la dévolution
This week the Government published its English Devolution White Paper.
It attempts to mask the incredibly dry subject matter with a dose of Boris Johnson-style boosterism. Angela Rayner’s preface proclaims: “England is bursting with ambition and potential. Our country has the raw ingredients to ignite growth… the number one mission of this government is to relight the fire of our economy and ignite growth in every region.”
The cheesy Johnsonian flourishes are perhaps not accidental. Labour sees the mayors of London as a model to follow: “Mayoral devolution works because Mayors can use their mandate for change to take the difficult decisions needed to drive growth.” We’ll look into whether Oxfordshire could end up with a Mayor later. But before that, what does this mean for Oxford City Council and the four rural districts?
Ménage à deux
Your quick reminder: Oxfordshire County Council does roads, education, and social care. The city and districts do planning, housing and bins. Many other counties have the same split. (County does libraries. Districts do leisure centres. Make it make sense.)
The Government has this split in its sights. The White Paper proclaims “we will facilitate a programme of local government reorganisation for two-tier areas”. Merging district councils into counties, it says, could save £2.9bn over five years. (Right now we can imagine Malcolm Tucker reaming out some junior civil servant for having published a White Paper filled with the word “two-tier”.) “Facilitating a programme” could mean gentle encouragement – but it could equally mean Malcolm Tucker-style coercion.
The pros: It’s not just about MBA-style efficiencies, tempting though these are (one HR department replacing six, one maintenance contract for the bin lorries, one Electoral Services team, 69 councillors rather than almost 300). Advocates of “unitary councils”, which combine county and district roles, point out that some decisions really need to be made in the same building. Right now, the decision on how many houses to build in Witney is made by West Oxfordshire District Council, but Oxfordshire County Council makes the decisions on the roads that will serve them.
The cons: Those who like the current model say that making decisions closer to the ground is better for democracy: that it’s better to make decisions about Witney in Witney than in Oxford, and that small councils are more representative. Nowhere is this more keenly felt than Oxford itself. Every year since 2000 but one, the city has elected more Labour councillors than any other party. But Labour is outnumbered elsewhere in the county. With a City Council, Oxford’s residents get more decisions made by the party they voted for.
District councils generally have healthier finances than counties, except for those which got carried away and gambled it away on the 2.46 at Epsom. District politicians guard this reputation fiercely. Though they’re unlikely to put it in so many words, they fret that unitary councils would spend all this money on social care, and not much on planning, bins or leisure centres.
Déja vu?
Readers with long memories will have heard this debate before.
In 2017, Oxfordshire County Council – at the time, Conservative-controlled – proposed that Oxfordshire become a unitary authority. (They’d argued the same in 2015.) A PwC Consulting report said it could save £100m over five years. Ian Hudspeth, OCC’s Conservative leader, lined up the other parties behind him. Labour’s Liz Brighouse praised “joining up services for people”; the LibDems’ Richard Webber said it would make “each councillor more directly accountable to the people they represent”.
Except County Labour had a different view to City Labour, and County Conservatives had a different view to Cherwell Conservatives.
Vale of White Horse and South Oxfordshire agreed with Ian Hudspeth. West Oxfordshire didn’t, plastering their free car parks with posters proclaiming they were “too good to lose”. Cherwell’s forthright leader Barry Wood launched a campaign to “save Cherwell District Council”. Oxford City Council set up a petition. The County cabinet report at the time put it succinctly:
Unfortunately, despite invitations to join the discussions, Oxford City Council, West Oxfordshire District Council, and Cherwell District Council have not been prepared to engage in developing a shared proposal and have continued an active public relations campaign, both jointly and individually, against proposals to reform local government in Oxfordshire.
Even Ian Hudspeth, one of Oxfordshire’s most effective politicians, couldn’t line up his own party in West Oxfordshire or Cherwell behind the plan. Since 2021, of course, OCC has been run by a Liberal Democrat/Green (and for a while, Labour) coalition. Though local LibDems were supportive in 2017, they have concluded that, right now, reorganising councils should not be a priority.
Ian Hudspeth’s plan has not been resurrected. Maybe he needed a Malcolm Tucker. We know there are one or two Clarion-reading councillors and campaigners who would love to be considered Oxfordshire’s Malcolm Tucker, and we love you all but no, we are not going to indulge you right now.
Je vous salue, mairie
London has a mayor: Sadiq Khan. Manchester has Andy Burnham. Liverpool has Steve Rotheram. Bristol had one, but got rid of the post. Cambridge has Nik Johnson, who is officially Mayor of the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority. Cambridgeshire & Peterborough has precisely one (1) decent cheese, Stilton. Except it’s actually made in Leicestershire, and was sold to travellers on the Great North Road from an inn in Stilton. It is now forbidden to make Stilton cheese in the village of Stilton. You can see why Charles de Gaulle vetoed Britain’s entry into the European Community.
The Labour Government’s strongholds are cities with mayors. London (population 9m), Manchester (2.9m), Liverpool (1.6m). They would like to roll out the mayoral model across England. But as Bristol’s 2022 vote to abandon its mayoralty demonstrated, not everyone is convinced.
So the Government has invented a halfway house: the Strategic Authority. This will be a new level above unitary councils – a bunch of county councils working together, with or without an elected mayor. A Strategic Authority will get extra powers over housing, transport and planning.
It says its “strong preference is for partnerships that bring more than one local authority together over a large geography”. In other words, Oxfordshire isn’t big enough to get full powers to plan houses unless it joins up with (say) Berkshire. Hands up who thinks Oxfordshire planning would be better if Bracknell had a say in it?
Marchons! Marchons!
All this uncertainty is making Oxfordshire’s politicians restive.
The County Council is up for election in May. Campaigning is already underway. There are rumours, as yet unfounded, that elections might be postponed until the new shape of local government is settled.
Our take is that this is unlikely. You don’t cancel elections if you’re “facilitating a programme”. But that hasn’t stopped Oxfordshire’s politicians raising the alarm. The Conservatives’ Liam Walker says it would be “hugely damaging for democracy”. Independent Oxford Alliance city councillor David Henwood has launched a petition against “the Labour Government disrupting the electoral schedule”. (Ironically, in 2020 Labour and the LibDems vocally opposed a suggestion by the Oxfordshire Conservatives to postpone county elections from 2021 to 2022 in anticipation of a unitary council. Plus ça change…)
Oxford’s Labour council finds itself in a tricky position. A unitary council risks shattering its influence, just as it did in 2017. But it doesn’t want to declare aux armes, citoyens against a Labour Government. City council leader Susan Brown issued a cautiously positive statement:
The white paper mentions a population of around 500,000 as an appropriate size for unitaries in most areas, but also highlights there may be exceptions to ensure new structures make sense for an area, including for devolution, and that decisions will be on a case-by-case basis. 500,000 would be bigger than Oxford, but smaller than Oxfordshire, and also much bigger than most existing unitary councils.
[…] We will therefore be looking carefully at what the options will be best for the residents of Oxford to reflect the very different needs of a city from its surrounding rural hinterland, and ensure they continue to have democratic representation at the closest level possible to reflect their views.
And as for a Mayor?
In anticipation of the White Paper, we have already been engaging in discussions with neighbouring councils in Oxfordshire, Berkshire and elsewhere about the potential creation of a Thames Valley Mayoral Combined Authority.
It all sounds a little like 1983’s plan to merge Oxford United and Reading FC as Thames Valley Royals (with cheese).
Maybe de Gaulle had a point. His “246 different types of cheese” line illustrated that France doesn’t have a single coherent identity. Does the Thames Valley – or even Oxfordshire? Henley looks to Reading. Banbury is a South Midlands town but increasingly swinging within Oxford’s commuter orbit. Burford is the Cotswolds, a little piece of Gloucestershire in Oxfordshire.
Mayoralties fit neatly in London or Manchester. If you live in Richmond or Surbiton, Rochdale or Stockport, you identify with “your” city. A Thames Valley mayoralty is less obvious. For all Angela Rayner’s words about “igniting growth”, elections for the Thames Valley Police & Crime Commissioner have hardly set Oxfordshire alight, with just 25% turnout compared to 40% for county council elections. How often do residents of Hungerford go to Oxford, or Banburians to Reading? Who has ever said “oh, I live in the Thames Valley”?
How many types of cheese would the Thames Valley have?
Non, je ne regrette rien
The history of English local government reorganisation is best summed up in this cartoon from the peerless XKCD.
Every 10 years, Whitehall decides local government is too complex. It introduces a new system. Result: local government is now even more complex.
The latest White Paper’s direction of travel is clear. One Oxfordshire council; no districts; and a Strategic Authority on top, grouping Oxfordshire with Berkshire and perhaps Buckinghamshire. But in the Commons, local government minister Jim McMahon stressed councils would not be forced to change.
We will write to all 21 [county councils] to invite them to make representations to be part of the first wave priority programme. From the conversations that we have had, we expect a significant number to want to be part of that reorganisation. But to be clear, that is not something that we are imposing. We are writing out and local areas are self-organising, because they understand that reform and modernisation are central.
The Government do not accept the one-size-fits-all argument […] We are not creating super-councils. We are creating a strategic authority that will give power from this place downwards, giving councillors far more power.
The letter will go out today to county councils inviting them to make a submission in January. […] If a local authority will not exist in the near future, it makes no sense to have an election to it. But the assumption is that elections in counties will take place as planned, unless authorities actively approach us to say that they want reorganisation discussions and have proposals that they can work up.
Oxford West & Abingdon’s Layla Moran spoke up for Oxfordshire’s district councils in the debate.
Of the 42 councils across the country that have increased social homes, four are in Oxfordshire. South Oxfordshire District Council has doubled the number of social homes it has delivered over the last 10 years. Meanwhile, Oxford City Council next door has halved its number. There are district councils that are doing incredible work, so why should they face finding themselves lumped in with underperforming councils? Surely, rather than having a distracting reorganisation, proper devolution to those councils that are doing well is the way to deliver for local people.
Drafting policies on devolution and council reorganisations is possibly not how Oxfordshire’s politicians, of any stripe, wanted to spend their Christmas. So don’t. Enjoy your Christmas cheese. The council will still be there in January.
Note de la rédaction
We left a bit out. Littlemore, Blackbird Leys, Old Marston, and Risinghurst & Sandhills have parish councils – a third tier, below the City. Nowhere else in Oxford does. Headington doesn’t. Wolvercote doesn’t. Nor does Jericho. But it does have a shop selling 246 types of cheese. Général de Gaulle would be proud.