The document discusses the future of local government in Wales and the United Kingdom. It addresses topics like devolution, city regions, the Welsh government budget, required savings for local government, and proposals for local government reorganization. It considers options for merging councils and forming combined authorities. It also examines alternative models for public services involving greater community and third sector involvement through cooperative approaches.

1. Steve Thomas CBE
Chief Executive WLGA
The First Law of PowerPoint, if in doubt
find a quote from Einstein.

2. How do you feel at the moment?
The world is a ball of confusion

3. The future of local government in Wales
Where is it heading?

4. The future of the United Kingdom
Where is it heading - Is Scotland settled?

5. The sleeping giant awakes
English devolution
This is not so much asymmetrical devolution as “chalk and cheese”
devolution.
2004 North East referendum hangover - Devolution without
Regional Assemblies??
City Regions – Almost an Renaissance idea of a resurgent city-state
fully empowered to run its own affairs in housing, transport,
regeneration.
Devo Manc – £22 billion of public expenditure devolved to a combined
authority? London, Leeds/Sheffield, Cornwall and Cambridgeshire
What does this mean for Wales? –The direction of travel in Scotland
and Wales is far more problematic in character. While both countries are on a
journey to greater autonomy as nations, there is a very real danger that the
opposite could be happening at the local level.

6. Stewardship of place
1. In-house provision of core services and
public employment with a responsibility
for providing
2. Maintenance of core capacity within the
sector
3. Collaborative relationships
4. Local representative and participative
democracy
5. Collective community outcomes
6. Joined up services meeting the needs of
local communities and delivering wider
strategic objectives
Strategic Commissioning
1. Expresses an explicit preference for
the private & voluntary sectors as
providers
2. Divestment to alternative service
providers
3. Contractual relationships
4. Market democracy, individual choice
and personalisation
5. Individual user outcomes
6. Fragmented services that lack
overall strategic co-ordination
What is the future operating model of Local Government?
Ensuring ----versus---- Commissioning

7. Are old Nick’s fantasises coming true or is
there another way?
British councils should follow the practice that exists in the American Mid-West where they
“met once a year to award all the council service contracts to private firms”
Almost one third of English councils are expected to outsource 40% of services by 2015
(NLGN)

8. £1.7 billion taken from the Welsh
Government budget
The UK budget laid before Parliament on
19 March 2014 showed the Welsh
Department expenditure limits as:
2013/14 £15.2bn
2014/15 £15.1bn
2015/16 £15.2bn
What has happened to the Welsh
Government budget to deepen the cuts
profile for local services?

9. •Welsh Government “the funding reductions experienced
by local government in England signal the future
financial reality for us in Wales” (23rd May 2013).
•Provisional settlement - average of 3.4% cuts.
Ceredigion and Powys as low as minus 4.5% (24th June
2014), NPT with lashings of cash at -2.4% (not).
•In year cuts. Plus huge cuts to specific grants. £220
million down and counting. Nearer 4.5% cut
•REASON - the findings of the Nuffield Report and
growing pressures on NHS budgets detailed in the
publication “A decade of austerity? The funding
pressures facing the NHS from 2010/11 to 2021/22”.
•RESULT = £425M extra to the NHS over the next 2
years. £900m coming out of local government by 2018
Rod Stewart was wrong as “The first cut is
clearly not the deepest”

10. Requirement for local government to find
£900 million in savings by 2018
• Stop maintaining roads, turn off
all the street lights, cut all
spending on public transport, stop
all winter maintenance of roads
and you would save £0.3 billion;
• Close the libraries, shut the
leisure centres and theatres and
stop maintaining parks and you
would save a further £0.3 billion;
• Stop planning control activities,
economic and community
development to save another £0.1
billion; and
• Stop all home to school transport
£0.1 billion.

11. Example – the effects of protections
on Torfaen’s Budget

12. The third rail of a nation's politics is a metaphor for any
issue so controversial that it is so “charged"; any politician
who dares to broach the subject will suffer.
A recent report by Mark Jeffs of the
Wales Audit Office, published for the
think tank Welsh Public Services 2025
entitled, “Future Pressures on Welsh
Public Services” argues that
demographics and pressures are ever
upward.
The report presents a best and worse
case scenario based on funding
forecasts. In this context what will it
mean if spending on the NHS rises at the
same levels that from 42% of the Welsh
Government’s present revenue budget to
a best case of 57% and worse case
scenario of 67% in 2024-25?

13. Pause for a moments reflection

14. LGR - the salvation of local government?

15. Commission on Public Services Governance
and delivery – Report Published 20/01/14
Weighty Tome – 99 page executive summary
347 page main report
62 full recommendations

16. 8th July 2014 Welsh government issue the
“White Paper – Reforming Local Government”
Accepts Williams recommendations for
12 authorities, but will allow variations
Sets out a timetable for reform
Two bills to produce new council in 2018
and 2020
Seeks voluntary mergers response
required by 28th November
WG “Committed to facilitating these, in
whatever way we can”
Financial package of support to
Underpin this unclear.

17. LGR – The proposed “marriages
made in heaven”
6 or 12 COUNCIL OPTION??
• Isle of Anglesey and Gwynedd
• Conwy and Denbighshire
• Flintshire and Wrexham
• Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire
• Neath Port Talbot and Bridgend
• Cardiff and the Vale of
Glamorgan
• Blaenau Gwent, Torfaen and
Caerphilly
• RCT and Merthyr Tydfil
• Monmouthshire and Newport
Swansea
Carmarthenshire
Powys

18. Its not about structures its about
sustainability
?

19. Reorganisation as the answer?
Then let’s debate the questions
CIPFA Work - What will it cost and will it
save money? Up fronts costs of between
£160m and £268m
In some areas mergers are clearly justified
and needed. But why do we need “one
size fits all”. Are the current local
government boundaries right?
Why is it right for Powys to merge with
the LHB but no one else?
Why base councils on health boundaries?
South Wales Programme.
Consistency - Carmarthenshire stands on
its own with 180,000 people yet Caerphilly
with 175,000 has to merge with Torfaen
and Blaenau Gwent?

20. WLGA discussion paper
4 Combined authorities for Wales?
• Sneaky sods in the WLGA try to create 26
councils?
•Actually its about locating functions at the
right strategic level.
•Scale without foregoing local autonomy.
•Economic Development, transport, waste
…………..strategic housing???
•These are the same functions that may
not survive austerity.
•Strong links to the City Regions concept -
Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield. Counties

21. •Adaptive innovation: councils creatively redefine their role and are able actively to
affect their operating environment, often working in close partnership with other
authorities
•Running to stand still: councils are led and managed well and can see a positive
future, provided that they can keep up the current pace and that there are no major
shocks
•Nostril above the waterline: councils are only able to act with a short-term view,
their existence is hand to mouth and even a small external change might seriously
challenge their viability
•Wither on the vine: councils have moved from action to reaction. Their finances
and capacity are not sufficient to the task and they are retreating into statutory
services run at the minimum levels
•Just local administration: councils have lost the capacity to deliver services,
either because they have 'handed back the keys' or because responsibility for
significant services has been taken from them
•Imposed disruption: councils are subject to some form of externally imposed
change, such as local government reorganisation
The lexicon of the good years is dead - do more
with less, continuous improvement blah blah blah

22. • Give bureaucratic paternalism a decent burial.
•The role of community trusts –Leisure and
libraries
•The role of the third sector – social impact
bonds
• The active citizen – running theatres and
cinemas
• Public responsibility – paying more for valued
services. It used to be called “taxation”.
• Redefining public services – focus on
prevention and demand management
• BUT – what about community capacity and
resourcing
Joe and Josephine Public to the
Rescue?

23. .
What is a happening on the ground?
In Anglesey, the Seiriol Project is
seeking new ways of engaging and
enabling community voice. Asset
mapping has taken place out across the
community such as in the local shop
and bowling green.
Get Monmouthshire Online brings together
the county council’s community learning and
library services, Communities 2.0,
Monmouthshire Housing Association, MCC
Housing, Melin Homes, Charter Housing and Job
Centre Plus. As a result of the partnership’s
work, people have learnt how to access the
internet to make contact with family and friends,
pay bills and shop online
Glyndyfrywdwy Enterprise Group feasibility completed in preparation
for the Asset transfer of Old School from Denbighshire County
Council to the local community. DVCS received funding from the
Intermediate Care Fund through the County Council
In Caerphilly, work has developed with
CCBC Commissioning Manager for
Supporting People to take a fresh look at
how the smaller third sector organisations
could contribute to the delivery of priorities
in the Supporting People Programme
Cwm Taf Consultation Hub ( an ESF
funded project) – an On-line engagement
hub between Rhondda Cynon Taf Council,
Merthyr Tydfil Council, South Wales
Police, Cwm Taf Local Health Board,
Voluntary Action Merthyr Tydfil and
Interlink Rhondda Cynon Taf.

24. Cooperative councils – a new
model?
There is a clear overlap
between the public
services ethic and
cooperative values not
least around open and
democratic models of
organisation
But the challenge is that it is not an entirely easy fit.
Cooperatives are enterprises. Cooperatives can be
many things, but not without a very significant
stretch, can they be a local authority. - Ed Mayo

25. The scale of the challenge

26. • Let us welcome a wide ranging debate, in a small country where
people should be unafraid to voice concerns and constructive
criticism.
• We live in a world where single solutions are dangerous.
• What’s wrong with different solutions for different areas?
• Test the new models , but accept they will not provide all the
answers
• Stop beating our chests and aspire to intelligence
• Recognise that in the current climate we “sail a boundless and
bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for
anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination.
The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel”.
Conclusion

27. Thanks for listening
Steve Thomas CBE
Chief Executive WLGA
steve.thomas@wlga.gov.uk