Tim Stoddard - White paper statement : Cumbria County Council

This week’s darker evenings are a stark reminder that, now that the clocks have gone back, winter is looming. Households around the county will have been fiddling with their dials at the end of last month, trying to work out whether slipping from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time meant they got an extra hour in bed.

However, three days before our clocks went back, a different kind of clock altogether started ticking. The alarm bell on this clock is set to go off in less than three month’s time and no-one can afford to ignore it.

The clock in question is called ‘Strong and Prosperous Communities’, the Local Government White Paper published last week which opens the door for councils to rethink the way they work. Most importantly, it gets local government closer to citizens and communities and offers the opportunity for them to make huge savings by cutting out areas where there’s duplication.

Cumbria's mentioned by name in the White Paper – but it made uncomfortable reading. The county was singled out for being a prime example of having too complex a political structure. The document compared Cumbria’s county council and six district councils with Sheffield, which has just one unitary council providing all of the same services. The figures were there for all to read: Cumbria… seven council leaders and 62 other executive members; Sheffield… one council leader and nine executive members; Cumbria… 371 councillors; Sheffield… 84 councillors.

Of course, Cumbria is a very different place from Sheffield and its population is spread out over a far greater distance, but anyone reading the paper would have come to the same conclusion – Cumbria is over-complicated. Splitting our county’s democratic leadership across two tiers of government (plus a third tier of parish and town councils) is giving both sets of councillors the same job description and weakening their ability to represent the people who’ve elected them.

Many of the duplications and divisions of responsibility that exist in our system are impossible to justify. Why should seven different councils in Cumbria all have separate back-office functions such as IT and human resources? Why should one council collect the waste from your bin and then another council dispose of it? Why should one council be responsible for cleaning the pavements and another responsible for maintaining the roads? These ‘boundaries of blame’ are there for historical reasons which just don’t stack up today.

Now that the White Paper has been published, there exists a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to put things right for a 21st century Cumbria. Some people would rather the issue just goes away and things stay the same. That cannot happen. The amount of money being issued to local authorities from the Government is going to get steadily tighter. If we don’t achieve greater efficiencies and economies of scale now, then spending cuts will be thrust upon us anyway and councils will be left to struggle to cope with the impact on services.

Cumbria already has the slowest economic growth rate in the whole of the UK and needs strong leadership to turn this round. The Government is increasingly concentrating on city regions as poles for growth and prosperity, and Cumbria will struggle to benefit from investment in Newcastle, Liverpool or Manchester. We need a single, strong voice for Cumbria to present a coherent and effective leadership for the county to compete nationally and in Europe for funding.

Other people would like to turn the clock back to 1973, when the two counties of Cumberland and Westmorland existed separately. That too cannot happen. The Government has already made it clear that it’s not going to consider redrawing county boundaries as part of this shake-up. To carve Cumbria into smaller pieces would be weakening its position and presence in the region. There’s a single primary care trust for the county, a single police authority, one fire and rescue service, a new University of Cumbria… a single council would add a powerful voice to drive Cumbria forward.

Realistically, Cumbria has one chance of being invited to become a unitary authority… and that’s if it presents a united voice with a strong case for a single authority in the county. Let’s not forget that Cumbria is among only a handful of authorities seen to have a realistic chance of being allowed to go unitary, so we’re in a unique and fortunate position.

This is not about the prospect of a takeover by the county council of the six district councils, but about the real opportunity for us to work together to construct an entirely new model – a new single council for Cumbria. From first principles, the county and district councils would both be replaced by a new single local authority which would provide strong leadership that is accountable and responsive to local people.

It would devolve power and leadership to local areas, where the elected representative would ensure all council services meet the needs of local people. That elected representative would have direct control over local resources and would monitor all council services so they meet the needs of the citizens and communities in Allerdale, Barrow, Carlisle, Copeland, Eden and South Lakeland.

There’s a lot of work to be done between now and January 25th, when expressions of interest in pursuing the case for a remodelled local government may be made. All the partner organisations in the county need to gather round and decide how to take this forward and elected councillors must have their say on how change could work. I’d like to hear your views too – so please write to me with any ideas on how you’d like to see the council working in Cumbria.

But not to grasp this opportunity and at least see if it’s workable would be doing all the taxpayers in the county a massive disservice. We’d be losing out on the opportunity to save public money, make our services more efficient and responsive, and to revitalise local democracy. Christmas will be here soon and the January 25th deadline will be upon us before we know it, so the clock is ticking.