Draft Buckinghamshire (Structural Changes) Order 2019

Jim McMahon Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2019 General Committees

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McDonagh. We have debated the issue previously, so I will not go into a lot of detail, other than to say that we are nearing the end of the process. We need to bear in mind, as I said at the start, that this is about people, place and community. When the new organisation comes into force, we need to make sure that, in its desire to re-establish its new identity, it does not ride roughshod over the historic community identities that people hold dear. The towns and villages where they live are what really matter to them.

We also cannot ignore the crisis that councils face with the future sustainability of the financial settlement. It does not matter whether it is an urban or a rural authority or one going headlong into a reorganisation. The truth is that there is not enough money in the system to fund the growing demand for adult social care, children’s services and other preventive services. We need to see an answer to that in the fair funding review that is taking place. Nobody in this room should believe that by simply reorganising local government we can solve the funding crisis that means older people are not getting the care they need, young people potentially are at risk, and the very fabric of our neighbourhoods or the community services that many people rely on are being taken away incrementally because of austerity. I accept that this is happening in isolation, but the Government need to come forward with a fair funding review and demonstrate that they have thought through the real pressures that councils will face. Of course, the bigger the council, the bigger the risk to the local community if the funding is not accurate and properly assessed.

The other thing that the Government have not addressed—this was particularly the case in the previous Committee on this topic, but I suppose they will say that this is for the local authorities concerned—is that there is still worry that several different councils are being brought together, all with different systems and processes, different ways of handling data and even different IT systems that will not necessarily talk to each other. It is important that the transition is managed in an appropriate timeframe, so that services do not fall over. We might think, “Well, what can go wrong?”, but even reporting fly-tipping on a local website requires a number of different components and IT systems to get the job from A to B and the fly-tipping removed. We might think that is something and nothing, but it is important to ensure that such community services are looked after. I will leave my comments there, in order to make way for Members with local interests.