Mark Isherwood
Shadow Local Government Minister Mark Isherwood AM is urging the Welsh Government to fully consider all the costs, risks and legal implications of local authority mergers before making any decision on local government reorganisation.
Last month the Williams Commission recommended that the current 22 councils should be cut to between 10 and 12 through a series of mergers, but Mr Isherwood believes that embarking on a reorganisation at a time when Local Government is enmeshed in driving through significant financial savings is fraught with hazard.
Expressing his concern to the Local Government Minister, Lesley Griffiths, in the Assembly this week, he said:
“It takes many years to cover the cost of merger and, as you will be aware, there are several legal safeguards regarding expenditure by local authorities, as Blaenau Gwent and Caerphilly discovered when they were about to merge social services last year and found that this would have placed Caerphilly at significant risk of cross-subsidising services in another authority. This is not legal. How, therefore, is the Welsh Government considering the law relating to mergers where it would be unlawful to merge with risk of financial deficit and voluntary mergers would not be an option under Williams unless the Welsh Government bought out any deficits resulting?”
The Minister said they will be looking at those issues.
Mr Isherwood also asked the Minister whether she and/or the First Minister will be meeting with the WLGA to discuss their concerns regarding the proposed mergers which they put forward in their evidence to the Communities, Equality and Local Government Committee inquiry.
Mr Isherwood, who is a member of the Committee, said:
“The WLGA said it was important to undertake a cost-benefit analysis before proceeding with collaborative projects. It said that it is important that ‘you have properly thought through the measures that you are about to take and worked out the costs of collaboration and the risks.’
“It has called for a properly costed financial analysis and has asked for urgent discussions with the First Minister. Has the First Minister agreed to meet WLGA representatives or will you and/or the First Minister be meeting them to discuss their concerns and agree a way forward?”
In the context of the Williams commission recommendations, Mr Isherwood also asked the Minister to respond to the evidence from Joe Simpson, the author of the Simpson review of local Government commissioned by the Welsh Government, to the Communities, Equality and Local Government Committee inquiry into Local Government Collaboration that, ‘What there is not is a right size for everything’ and that he did not believe that reorganisation was the answer, suggesting that the solution lay in authorities combining and collaborating but that “you cannot just do it by prescription”.
