My article on unitary authorities in the Total Politics February issue came out before Hazel Blears’ decision to delay her final pronouncements on the future of local government in Norfolk, Suffolk and Devon until July 15. This is after the local elections in June and also makes it almost impossible to start the process of changing over to a unitary before the next general election in 2010. In light of this, and because Devon County Council are supporting a county wide unitary bid, I spoke to its leader, Lib Dem Cllr Brian Greenslade, to gauge his views on the delay and the wider issues around unitaries.

BD: How frustrating is it for you that there’s been this delay until July?

Cllr Brian Greenslade: Really frustrating. Devon like everywhere else in the developed world is suffering badly from the economic slump and there are some real issues there to be addressed. These continual interruptions to our normal business are very frustrating.
We’re all hamstrung to a degree. We’re working hard at keeping our normal business going and, at Devon County Council, we’re certainly addressing the economic slump issue. But every so often there comes a time when you don’t take a decision because frankly you don’t know where you’re going to be in two years’ time.

BD: Why do you think the Communities and Local Government Department decided on a delay in making a decision? Is it just indecision or have there been problems with the boundary commission failing to look at things in aggregate?

I think it’s about making sure that the process that’s being followed is watertight, so that when they do take a decision, whatever it may be, they won’t find themselves tripped over by getting some final legal challenge. And perhaps the timetable the government originally gave to the Boundary Committee was a bit ambitious.

BD: There are value for money arguments used by both sides of the unitiary authority debate. Could you give me Devon county council’s case for a unitary and how it offers value for money?

We’ve got a very clear case on value formoney. We are very pleased that not only did we get an independent organisation to look at our figures but the Boundary Committee did the same thing. So it’s not just Devon County saying ‘we can achieve this as a single unitary authority’. What we believe is possible by having one council instead of nine is that we could in the first five years, even after paying the costs of transition, even after setting up what we believe are our improved local democratic arrangements for a community board and city board for Exeter, are savings of £28m, and and also be annual savings of £19m a year.

We’re very confident we can deliver that, because we haven’t been overboard in terms of making savings assumptions, in fact we’ve been quite conservative. Given the current economic plight and the obvious reality that next comprehensive spending review will be mean really tight times for public services, those savings would be absolutely brilliant news for public services in Devon and also for the taxpayer.

BD: A Lib Dem colleague on your council, Cllr Rob Hannaford has made an interesting point. He said that county council elections for this year would cost £600,000, and that they’d only be in place for one year before a unitary was introduced. Is that right?

He’s potentially right. At the moment Devon county council elections are going to go ahead on the 4th of June like county council elections elsewhere, I’m sure Rob’s right about the cost£600,000. And who knows? In the autumn, the government may lay orders for a structural change in Devon and might actually then say let’s have shadow elections in May 2010. Or the very least there would be elections in the spring of 2011. So that £600,000 which has been used to elect county councillors for a four year period – I mean, you’re not going to get your value for money, are you?

BD: Are you getting much feedback from the public on unitaries?

The public, frankly, are largely unengaged with this issue. They’ve heard and read through the press a lot about this. I think if you spoke to the average citizen of Devon and said, ‘are you aware that the councils may change?’ they probably would be but they wouldn’t be greatly excited. I mean, my postbag has not been full up of letters about this issue. It’s largely passing people by.

I think what the public want is good quality, value for money local government services and why should they be terribly worried about the structure? After all Devon County Council already provides 85 per cent of all local government services throughout the county anyway.

BD: So why would a unitary allow you to provide better services is you’ve already got that percentage covered?

Economies of scale. At the moment Devon has nine councils and every council has got to have a chief executive, for example. Each council must have a basic administration structure, we all run our own payrolls, and the eight district councils collect the waste and the County Councils dispose of it – there are so many opportunities for bringing services together and offering large economies of scale.

BD: Say you argued that creating a unitary almost creates a democratic deficit, because you have fewer councillors over a pretty large area. Devon’s a large place

Absolutely. First of all, when we talk about a democratic deficit in Devon, don’t forget the size and quality of the third tier of local government in Devon. We’ve got around 400 parish councils in the county, who bring democracy very close to the community.
But we have recognised this issue [of a democratic deficit] in terms of our proposals, and we are proposing to have 28 community boards, each with their own budget, costed into our own figures, for the main market and coastal towns, which are the central hubs of community life in Devon.

BD: Considering that Exeter Council supports its own unitary, how would your proposal of a city board for them work?

It would be, first and foremost, part of the unitary of Devon, but it would have quite extensive powers, like I say we do recognise the importance of Exeter as our capital city. And life within the city is different to large swathes of Devon outside.
But Exeter isn’t an island- it is well linked to quite a sizable population around the city that I think work and largely live their lives with Exeter. We believe that that would give the Exeter residents more local democracy because Exeter is different to the rest of Devon, it doesn’t even have a community council within the city. And if our proposals go ahead, we would be consulting with the citizens of Exeter. In fact, what they would want is a system of community councils within the city of Exeter underneath the city board anyway.

BD: I know you said that the public were unengaged with the process but obviously one thing that gets people animated is council tax. And what impact would a Devon-wide unitary have on council tax?

We believe it means good news for council taxpayers across the county. Some districts have a lower level of council tax than others, and its been our pledge, and this again has been fully costed by our figures, that the council tax that we would set for the new unitary authority would be at the lowest level currently paid within the county.

BD: You’re in quite an interesting position, geographically because Cornwall next door has moved to unitary ahead of you. What kind of lessons, dangers or examples has that provided for you?

I think there are two responses. Number one is the fact that there is a large unitary to the west of us is an example of why Devon really needs a large authority as well. Secondly, we’ve seen the ups and downs that Cornwall have been through with their progress to unitary authority. Perhaps the messages that have come out of Cornwall are not perhaps quite as bad as the headlines would suggest. But nevertheless, they’ve had a sort of resistance group, if you like, still trying within Cornwall to frustrate progress towards a single unitary authority, which has been pretty unhelpful. I hope we will not have the same thing in Devon - in fact, I think the way that the eight districts are working together already means hopefully we will avoid that bear pit.

BD: Are you worried that a Tory government would come in and scrap the whole thing?

First of all, I think one shouldn’t assume there will be a Tory government. Having made that point, I understand that the Conservative party position as this. If orders have already gone through Parliament to create unitary authorities in the three counties then they would not seek to overturn that. If Parliament has not yet taken a decision, then I think an incoming Tory government would simply scrap it. But from our position here at Devon County Council, we’ve always made it clear that we’ll be perfectly happy to go on working to improve local government with our district partners, and if that were the case, we’d just get on with life. If there’s going to be a unitary solution imposed by government, then we think it should be one council for all of the Devon county area.

BD: Councillor Greenslade, thank you very much