Local Government Reorganisation: Somerset

Kelly Tolhurst Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Kelly Tolhurst)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Ms McVey. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger) on securing this debate. His passion for Somerset and its history is well known across the House. He often treats us to interesting snippets of historic fact.

I understand his long-standing interest in this matter. The Government are committed to levelling up all areas of the country and empowering our regions by devolving money, resources and control away from Westminster. We will in due course set out our detailed plans in the local recovery and devolution White Paper, as my hon. Friend mentioned.

At the spending review, the Chancellor announced a new £4 billion levelling-up fund, building on the success of our £3.6 billion town fund. Local areas across England will be eligible to apply directly to the fund to finance things that communities need and people want. The spending review makes available up to £600 million in 2021-22, and we will publish a prospectus for the fund, launching the first round of the competitions in the new year. Further finding will spread over subsequent years, up to 2023-24.

The Government consider that locally led changes to the structure of local government, whether in the form of unitarisation or district mergers, can be the appropriate means of saving taxpayers’ money, and improving service delivery and local accountability. However, we are clear that any reform of a local government area is most effectively achieved through locally led proposals, put forward by those who know the area best—the very essence of localism, to which the Government remain committed. There is no question of, as my hon. Friend referred to, top-down imposition of Government solutions. Any proposal for change will need to meet our long-standing criteria and must be likely to improve local government in the area, command a good deal of local support and lead to unitary councils covering a credible geography.

This brings me to local government reorganisation in Somerset, one of the three areas of the country where, on 9 October, the Secretary of State invited all the principal councils to submit locally led proposals for unitary local government. The other areas where councils received an invitation were Cumbria and North Yorkshire. Councils in these areas have been developing ideas about restructuring local government in their areas for some time and have requested such invitations.

In Somerset, all five councils published a report on the future of local government there in January 2019, looking at a wide range of options for improving local services. It is right that Somerset councils should now have the opportunity to take their local discussions to a conclusion and, if they wish, make a proposal for unitary reform. We have received two outline proposals from Somerset councils—one from the county council proposing a single unitary for the area, and one from the district councils proposing two unitary councils. The councils will now have until 9 December to submit their proposals in full.

I welcome the healthy debate that this process represents on the best way forward for local government in Somerset to ensure that councils can deliver excellent services for their businesses and residents. It would not be appropriate for me to comment today on those proposals as they are yet to be submitted in full, but I would like to outline the steps that we plan to take after the full proposals have been received.

The next step is for the Secretary of State to consult. The statute requires that any such consultation consult any councils that would be affected by a proposal but did not submit it, as well as any other persons that the Secretary of State considers appropriate. We will be keen to gather views from a wide range of stakeholders, including councils, other public service providers, businesses, voluntary sector organisations and, very importantly, local residents. Of course, we look forward to hearing from all local MPs.

We would hope to launch any consultation in early 2021. We may consult on the proposals received, or we may decide at that point not to take a proposal further, if for example it was not in compliance with the invitation. Hence, we may undertake the consultation on both proposals for Somerset.

Following the consultation, the Secretary of State will carefully consider the proposals, assessing them alongside the long-standing criteria that I described earlier. He must have regard to all representations that he has received in relation to the proposals, including those received through the consultation exercise, and all other relevant information available to him.

Where the Secretary of State decides that a proposal should be implemented, he will seek parliamentary approval for the necessary secondary legislation—the structural changes order—with which my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset is familiar. Such an order would need to be considered by each House. If Parliament approves the implementation of such a proposal, it is likely that a new unitary council will be established from 1 April 2023. The majority of the implementation work that councils will undertake will be in 2022-23, with elections to shadow or preparing councils in May 2022.

I just want to touch on elections. The Secretary of State has the power to postpone local elections. We recognise that, when making proposals, councils may request that the May 2021 local elections in the area be postponed for a year. There are precedents for a one-year postponement of local elections where unitarisation is under consideration, the examples being the Buckingham and Northamptonshire unitarisations. Such a postponement avoids members being elected for a short period and confusion for the electorate, who are asked to vote for councils for the future that are under consideration and may be abolished. We will carefully consider any such request from any councils and any other representations that we receive on that.

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate, and I look forward to having further discussions with him on the matter. I am grateful to him for passing on the letter addressed to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State about the issues that he has raised.

With the invitation, councils in Somerset now have an opportunity to move forward with reforms that can open the way to achieving significant benefits for local people and businesses, delivering service improvement, facilitating economic growth and contributing to the levelling up of opportunity and prosperity across the country. I very much hope that we see successful proposals and outcomes for Somerset and indeed the rest of the country.

Question put and agreed to.