Department of

Government

Political Science Working Paper Series 2005/2006

“LOCAL AUTHORITY STRUCTURES AND ADMINISTRATIVE BOUNDARIES: EVIDENCE FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM AND OTHER JURISDICTIONS”

- Paul Carmichael, Neil Collins and Aodh Quinlivan.

No. 6

Profile of Authors

Paul Carmichael completed his PhD at the University of Strathclyde in 1992 and then joined the University of Ulster. Since then, he has developed his research and teaching profile, focusing chiefly on local government, devolution and intergovernmental relations, and the civil service. He was appointed Professor of Public Policy/Government in 2004.

Neil Collins is Professor and Head of the Department of Government at University College Cork. His current research interests are in political corruption, clientelism and e-politics. His is the co-editor, with Terry Cradden, of Political Issues in Ireland Today (2004). He was appointed Executive Dean of the UCC’s Commerce Faculty in October 2005.

Aodh Quinlivan is a Lecturer in Politics in the Department of Government at University College Cork. Prior to this appointment, he worked for six years in Cork County Council. He is a specialist in local government studies and in public sector reform.

© Department of Government 2006

PURPOSE OF RESEARCH

At the end of October 2002, Cork City Council commissioned research on the subject of local authority administrative boundaries. Specifically, the researchers were requested to examine and report upon the following:-

·  The experience of the United Kingdom in setting up unitary authorities

·  The theoretical, political and economic basis for the establishment and continued existence of local government administrative boundaries.

In undertaking this study the research team concentrated primarily on the United Kingdom but also drew from the experiences of other jurisdictions including France, Australia, United States of America and South Africa.

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

IN SETTING UP UNITARY AUTHORITIES

The Structure of Local Government in the United Kingdom

Since the nineteenth century, a debate has continued in academic and practitioner circles concerning the relative merits of unitary versus two-tier local government. For example, the great political economist John Stuart Mill (1904) argued “there should be but one elective body for all local business, not different parts of it” (p.271). It was arguments such as these that encouraged the creation of modern local government in the late nineteenth century, sweeping away a mosaic of single purpose bodies rarely coterminous in membership or boundaries that emerged largely like topsy during the previous decades.

In the 1880/90s, the United Kingdom developed a standardised configuration of local authorities based largely on the ancient shire counties beneath which there was a tier of municipal boroughs. In England and Wales, the Local Government Act 1888, formalised the system introducing county councils based on the shires. Those municipal boroughs with populations exceeding 50000 were granted ‘county borough’ status, effectively conferring independence from the county council, and enjoying the powers of the new county councils in addition to those that they already possessed as municipal boroughs. In effect, the county boroughs were the unitary authorities of their time. Broadly similar albeit distinctive arrangements followed in Scotland and Ireland.

With minor changes, these arrangements endured until the 1970s although the debate over unitary and two-tier structures continued. One senior academic commentator wrote approvingly of unitary city government when he observed a:

general realization that city government is in practice more democratic and popular than county government, notwithstanding that the franchise is legally the same in both cases. This is due partly to the long distances to be travelled and the time and expenses involved in attending meetings of the county council and its committees at the county town; partly, no doubt to the discontent and apathy of the local population caused in certain cases by the failure of the county councils to provide satisfactory services, coupled with the impossibility of obtaining sufficient representation on the council to secure redress (Robson, cited in Stewart, 2000, p.78)

Ironically, Robson was later to contend forcefully that ‘the need for a two tier system is universally recognised’ (Robson, cited in Leach and Percy-Smith, 2001, p.60). In some respects, of course, the debate is oversimplified insofar as references to ‘unitary authorities’ misleadingly suggest that such bodies are ‘all-purpose’ authorities, i.e., that they have sole responsibility for discharging local government services. In reality, even when supposedly unitary arrangements are introduced, many erstwhile local government functions may well be carried out by special-purpose bodies, joint boards or even government departments.

By the 1960s, increasing dissatisfaction in both national and local government encouraged central government to embark upon a series of enquiries with a view to achieving a fundamental overhaul of the structure of local government in the UK.

The Redcliffe-Maud Report (1969) in England

In 1965, perhaps in fulfillment of Robson’s assertion, a new two-tier arrangement came into being for Greater London. However, thereafter, theory and practice departed radically. Building on these changes in London, in 1966, a Royal Commission was set up under the chairmanship of Sir John Maud (later Lord Redcliffe-Maud) to review functions and areas in England (outside Greater London). The subsequent Redcliffe-Maud Report (1969) was (and remains) the largest single authoritative examination of local government structure in England ever undertaken. Essentially, it argued that there were structural defects in the then system of local government. First, the existing map of local government was not compatible with the pattern of contemporary life and work, a gap that was widening thanks to social, economic and technological changes. Second, the artificial distinction between town and country rendered impossible effective planning of development and transportation while engendering a degree of hostility between county boroughs and their county hinterlands. Third, the allocation of functions was considered to be fragmented making comprehensive provision more difficult. Fourth, the Report considered many local authorities to be too small in terms of their populations and capacity to raise revenue independently, whilst often being deficient in terms of qualified personnel, expertise and technical capabilities. All in all, these weaknesses produced a system of local government characterised by public confusion, organisational complexity and institutionally weak in comparison to national government.

Redcliffe-Maud contended that any reformed system be predicated on the idea that town and country must be interdependent. It contended that all environmental type services (including planning, development and transportation) as well as personal services (like education, social services, health and housing) should be vested with the same authority. All authorities ought to be of sufficiently large population (minimum 250,000) as to command sufficient resources to be able to discharge their range of services effectively. Equally, however, an authority should not become so large as to become too remote from those it exists to serve (maximum 1,000,000). Finally, the Report argued that a new pattern of local government should build on the existing one insofar as practicable. In sum, four criteria – efficiency, democracy, patterns of modern living and existing arrangements, existed for use in determining any new configuration of local government. Looking at the existing situation, Redcliffe-Maud maintained that “where a county borough under strong leadership has co-ordinated its services and set out to achieve objectives through the use of all its powers, it has been the most effective local government unit we have” (1969, p.269). Thus, based on the above criteria and analysis, the Report’s authors settled on a proposal to abolish the existing 1000+ local authorities, replacing them with 61 new local authority areas. Of these, 58 would be ‘all-purpose authorities’. These would be based mainly on enlarged county boroughs and styled ‘unitary’ authorities. The principal “attraction of the unitary authority was that it would promote more comprehensible and accountable local government – with only one authority responsible for all services” in a given locality (Leach and Percy-Smith, 2001, p.60). In the three largest provincial English cities, based on the conurbations of Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester, the Report accepted that the population size and density of these areas merited a two-tier form of metropolitan style government similar to that introduced in Greater London.

While the 1964-70 Labour Government of the day broadly accepted the Report, albeit with modifications, the subsequent Conservative Government (1970-74) opted to retain the two-tier structure, maintaining that a unitary structure was too radical a departure from established practice. The effects of reform can be gleaned from examining the experience of some of the UK’s largest provincial cities (see Table 1).

After local government reorganisation in 1974, cities like Liverpool and Manchester retained their former boundaries, unlike cities like Birmingham and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but most dramatically the cities of Leeds and Bradford, which were considerably expanded to absorb their suburban hinterland. Hence, cities like Liverpool and Manchester were denied the potential in local resources that cities like Leeds and Bradford gained after swallowing the lucrative domestic ratebase of their affluent suburbs, so exacerbating the fiscal stress they were experiencing. Generally, the 36 metropolitan district councils of England were vested with most of the former county borough functions except roads, public transport, and public protection that were vested with the upper tier (metropolitan county council). Reorganisation left the new county authorities shorn of glory, failing to put education and social services into the county ambit unlike in the shire areas of England. It produced a bottom heavy system making the metropolitan counties potentially unviable, for want of sufficient major functions.

Elsewhere in England, the reverse situation obtained. That is, it was the shire counties that enjoyed the lion’s share of the local government budget, leaving a tier of shire districts to discharge essentially environmental and civic amenity services.

The Wheatley Report (1969) in Scotland

Like Redcliffe Maud in England, the corresponding exercise in Scotland - the Wheatley Commission – emphasized key criteria that should help determine the appropriate units of local government, namely, functional viability, ‘correspondence with communities’, and democratic viability. However, unlike its counterpart south of the border, in reconciling what can be conflicting criteria, Wheatley recommended the creation of a two-tier structure based on an upper tier of regions and a lower tier of districts. Only in the northern and western isles was a unitary model proposed (for Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles).

The Wheatley model’s rationale was most controversial in respect of the proposals for local government in west-central Scotland. In advocating a large unit incorporating most of west-central of Scotland – Strathclyde Regional Council – Wheatley did acknowledge that the proposed unit was large and so contended that the creation of a new tier of districts would provide an essential counterbalance. The city of Glasgow itself formed the basis of a new city authority, the City of Glasgow District Council, the lineal descendant of the old Glasgow Corporation but denuded of most major service responsibilities – education, social work, police, fire, passenger transport, highways and water/sewerage – leaving it to provide a wide array of essentially civic amenity and environmental services, plus public housing. If widely seen as long overdue, the wholesale reorganisation was not relished. The removal of powers and functions from the former Glasgow Corporation was keenly contested and bitterly resented in many quarters. Equally, defining the ‘best’ size for the new Glasgow authority proved problematic. The fate of the city of Glasgow illustrated how pressing political imperatives held sway over other considerations in determining the new local authority boundaries. Wheatley’s proposals were considerably altered in the course of enactment after pressure from ratepayers’ associations, Conservatives and others in the predominantly affluent Glaswegian suburbs of Bearsden, Milngavie, Bishopbriggs, Newton Mearns and Eastwood as well as the adjacent but socio-economically deprived district of Clydebank. Resistance was strong, too, from contiguous towns and burghs like Rutherglen, Renfrew and Paisley that had long resisted the importunities of the city of Glasgow and which had no intention of being swallowed up by what they viewed as ‘Big Brother’. While Rutherglen was eventually devoured, Glasgow’s municipal area was otherwise unchanged, with profound effects on the social and political composition and balance of housing tenure of the new district.

Organic Change (1979)

In the shire (non-metropolitan) areas of England and Wales, the upper tier counties were vested with the bulk of service responsibilies (as measured by budget) with the lower-tier districts having a relatively small share of the overall local government budget. For many former county boroughs, especially the ‘Big 11’ (Bristol, Derby, Kingston-upon-Hull, Leicester, Nottingham, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent, plus Cardiff and Swansea in Wales) often Labour-dominated, the loss of status occasioned by the 1974 reorganisation was bitterly resented especially since the shire counties were often Conservative-dominated. In these areas especially, sympathy for the unitary ideal remained high.

In response to pressure from its disaffected urban heartlands, the 1974-79 Labour Government published a White Paper Organic Change (HMG, 1979) that contained proposals to restore key powers (lost in 1974) to the larger former county boroughs, as well as Scotland’s four cities (Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow). Although Labour had criticized its predecessor’s reforms and failure to implement Redcliffe-Maud, Organic Change envisaged essentially modest revisions. Basically, the case for restoration was that to deny cities like Bristol (population: 370000) and Leicester (population: 275000) responsibility for functions like education and social services was indefensible when they were being provided by metropolitan districts of much smaller size (and traditional municipal status) such as Knowsley (population: 153000) and South Tyneside (population: 155000).

Of course, for every proponent of change, there is usually an equally vocal opponent. Arguments over local government structures and boundaries stretch this general maxim much further since, invariably, the clamour for change is more than offset by those resistant to it. Generally, people in the areas immediately juxtaposed to the boundaries of large cities are reluctant to see their areas swallowed up by their big neighbours. In respect of the wish of one of the Big 11 – Kingston-upon-Hull - the city’s wish to expand was fiercely contested. Indeed, both before and since, while the city has sought to expand its municipal boundary on several occasions absorbing dormitory villages in the adjacent East Riding, its push for enlargement has always been thwarted. For its part, even the modest proposals enshrined within Organic Change were not implemented as Labour lost the 1979 General Election.