Draft Somerset (Structural Changes) Order 2022

Kemi Badenoch Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 General Committees

[The Minister for Levelling Up Communities (Kemi Badenoch)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Somerset (Structural Changes) Order 2022.

The draft order was laid before the House on 24 January 2022. If approved and made, it will implement the proposals submitted by Somerset County Council for a single unitary for the whole of the Somerset County Council area. The order will establish for the people of Somerset a new single unitary council. Implementing that proposal and establishing the unitary authority will enable stronger leadership and engagement at the strategic level and with communities at the most local level.

Somerset is not among the areas for an early county deal, but we will continue discussions with it about a future devolution deal. The reform for which the draft order provides will help pave the way for such a future deal.

Hon. Members may remember that this is locally led process of reform began formally on 9 October 2020. On that date, the then Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), invited all the principal councils in Somerset and the neighbouring unitary councils of Bath and North East Somerset and of North Somerset to put forward, if they wished, proposals to replace the current two-tier system of local government with single-tier local government.

The invitation set out the criteria for unitarisation. Unitary authorities would be established that are likely to improve local government and service delivery across the area of the proposal, giving greater value for money, generating savings, and providing stronger strategic and local leadership, with more sustainable structures; to command a good deal of local support, as assessed in the round, across the whole area of the proposal; and to have an area with a credible geography, consisting of one or more existing local government areas with an aggregate population that is either within the range 300,000 to 600,000, or such other figure that, having regard to the circumstances of the authority, including local identity and geography, could be considered substantial.

Two locally led proposals for local government reorganisation in Somerset were received in December 2020, one for a single unitary council and one for two unitary councils. Before we made any decisions on how to move forward, the Government consulted widely. The statutory consultation, which ran from 22 February to 19 April, prompted almost 5,500 responses. Of those responses, 5,167, or 94% of the total responses, were from residents living in the area affected. Both proposals received a good deal of support: some 3,000 residents, or 57% of those who responded, supported a two-unitary option; some 2,000 residents, or 35% of those who responded, supported a single-unitary option; 72% of respondents from the business sector supported a single-unitary option; and 88% of respondents from other public service providers also supported the single-unitary option.

My right hon. Friend the then Secretary of State announced his decision on the proposals on 21 July 2021. He made a balanced judgment, assessing both proposals against the three criteria to which I referred, which were set out in the invitation of 9 October. He also had regard to all representations received, including responses to the consultation, and to all other relevant information available to him. He concluded that the two-unitary proposal did not meet the criterion of improving local government and service delivery across the area. He also concluded that it did not meet the credible geography criterion. He concluded that the single-unitary proposal met all three criteria set out in the invitation of 9 October.

The Government believe that there is a powerful case for implementing this locally led proposal for change. It will improve local government by enhancing social care and safeguarding services through closer connection with related services, such as housing, leisure and benefits. It will also improve local government by offering opportunities for improved strategic decision making in areas such as housing, planning and transport. It will provide improvements to local partnership working with other public sector bodies by aligning with arrangements in existing partnerships and allowing existing relationships and partnership working to be maintained without disruption. It will generate savings estimated by the county council to be £52.6 million over five years.

The unitary decision will preserve service delivery over a county-wide area that has an established local identity that is easily understood by residents. It will provide a single point of contact, so that residents, businesses and local communities will be able to access all council services from one place. If Parliament approves the draft order, from 1 April 2023, there will be a single unitary council for Somerset, delivering the improvements that I have just outlined.

We have prepared the draft order in discussion with all the councils concerned. I take this opportunity to thank everyone involved in the process for their work, which they undertook together constructively and collaboratively—not least local MPs. Our discussions with the councils included discussing the transitional and electoral arrangements. Those are key in how the councils will drive forward implementation. Where there has been unanimous agreement between all the councils, we have adopted their preferred approach. Where there were different views of the detailed provisions, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State considered all the differing views and reached a decision accordingly.

Turning to the detail of the draft order, I will highlight its key provisions. The order provides that, on 1 April 2023, the districts of Mendip, Sedgemoor, Somerset West and Taunton, and South Somerset will be abolished. The councils of those districts will be wound up and dissolved. Their functions will transfer to the new unitary Somerset Council.

The draft order also provides for appropriate transitional arrangements. Those include, in May 2022, elections for the new unitary council, which will assume its full powers on 1 April 2023. The elections will be on the basis of a 110-member authority, with 55 two-member electoral divisions. Subsequent elections to the unitary council will be in May 2027 and every four years thereafter. We expect that the Local Government Boundary Commission for England will undertake a full electoral review before the May 2027 election. Parish council elections due in May 2023 will be brought forward to 2022 to align with the unitary council election cycle. A duty to co-operate during the transitional period to 1 April 2023 will be placed on existing councils.

To support councils in the transitional period to 1 April next year, if the draft order is approved and made, I intend to use my powers under the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 to issue a direction. The direction will provide statutory support to the voluntary protocol that the Somerset councils have already adopted on entering into contracts and the disposal of land during the transitional period. As one might expect, that is in line with the approach adopted in most previous unitarisations. It will ensure that the new unitary council has appropriate oversight of the commitments that predecessor councils may enter into during the transitional period and that the new unitary council will take on from 1 April 2023. Before issuing any such direction, I will invite council views on a draft.

In conclusion, through the draft order we seek to replace the existing local government structures in Somerset that were set up in 1974 with a new council that will be able to deliver high-quality, sustainable and local services to the people of Somerset. The council will be able to provide effective leadership at the strategic and the most local levels. All the existing councils have made it clear that they share those aims and are committed to the very best services for Somerset communities. The draft order will deliver that and, on that basis, I commend it to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kemi Badenoch]

I have been very encouraged by our spirited debate on this statutory instrument. Yesterday we managed to complete our discussion in 15 minutes; this has been a genuine debate. I thank all members of the Committee for their contribution, but I will say that I disagree with the entire premise of the arguments made by the hon. Member for Bootle. He seems to believe that this is an issue of local government finance. It is not; it is about devolution and levelling up. Unitarisation is not a solution to deep-seated—

[Peter Dowd]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kemi Badenoch]

No, because I can tell that the hon. Gentleman wants to have a debate about local government finance. This is a structural change order. He did not speak in the local government finance settlement debate a couple of weeks ago, in which he could have raised many of these issues. In fact, a lot of the points that he made would be more suitable for a debate in the Somerset County Council chamber, and were not really relevant to the structural change order that we are considering.

I must stress to all Members—I have made this point previously—that unitarisation is not a one-size-fits-all solution to multiple problems. If what the hon. Gentleman said is true—from what I heard from Members representing Somerset, it is not true that there are deep-seated financial issues—unitarisation would not fix the problems, so it does not make sense for him to argue that those problems are why we are making these changes. Considering what we have had to do in Liverpool—I will not go into the details—it is extraordinary that he, a Merseyside MP, is talking about what is happening in Somerset.

[Peter Dowd]

On a point of order, Mr Efford. The Minister really needs to get her facts right. I am the Member of Parliament responsible for Sefton Council, which is a different borough. Why on earth she is referring to Liverpool, when I do not represent Liverpool, is beyond me.

[The Chair]

Thank you for your intervention. We do not need to get sidetracked into the finances of local authorities. We are dealing with Somerset, and if we could stick with what we are here to debate, I would be grateful.

[Kemi Badenoch]

Thank you, Mr Efford; I think that is right. However, the hon. Member for Bootle made a point about Tory-controlled councils, so I think I can make a point about Labour-controlled councils in response. He is a Merseyside MP—I did not say he was a Liverpool MP—and the fact is that the four commissioners that we sent from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities were appointed after an emergency inspection found a serious breakdown of governance and multiple failures. The inspection was triggered by the arrest of ex-Mayor Joe Anderson.

[The Chair]

Order. We are not going any further down that road. We are going to debate Somerset.

[Kemi Badenoch]

Yes, and I will come back to Somerset.

[Mike Amesbury]

On a point of order, Mr Efford. Reference was made to Liverpool and Merseyside, because you have just increased the fees for the commissioners by 50%—

[The Chair]

No, no, no. That is not a point of order; it is a point of debate, and it is not for this debate. Good try, but it is not for this debate. Minister, stick with Somerset.

[Kemi Badenoch]

Thank you, Mr Efford. I shall now stick with Somerset. Opposition Members have raised multiple questions, but first I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil for adding quite a lot of local context to what has been going on and reminding me that we have had considerable engagement not just with Members of Parliament—we know that they were not unanimous, but the vast majority of Somerset MPs agree with what is happening today—but with district councils. I wrote to them asking for further views about things that we wanted to do around election dates and so on. They were largely Liberal Democrat-controlled councils, and the decision that was being made was not a partisan political one. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising some of those points and allowing me to draw out the context.

I will now move on to some of the questions that were asked. My hon. Friend specifically asked about putting Lib Dem South Somerset into special measures. I cannot do that in the SI debate, but I will update him about some of the issues that he has referred to. I am sure I can get officials to write to him to provide additional information.

The shadow Minister asked a question about engagement and the local community networks, and whether it was 15 or 20. It is 15 to 20; that is something that they can decide themselves. Those local community networks will cover every part of Somerset. They will be, effectively, cabinet committees of the new council and supported by a senior community development officer. I think that is the right way to go, and it shows that these are locally led proposals.

I ask forgiveness from the hon. Member for Bootle, who asked some further questions specifically about the text of the SI. I will write to him on some of those points; I have missed the notes that I made. There was a substantive discussion around the consultation, and he raised very good points. I do not think it is odd for him to raise them. We look at all the decisions that we make in the round, and the referendum principle does not apply here. Those consultations are not referendums; they are advisory. In some cases, they can show that there is a distinct lack of interest in a particular proposal. The way we phrased it in the consultation was not as an either/or, but as a preference. The fact that people might have preferred one to the other did not mean that they did not like the other. That is why the Secretary of State took all those decisions in the round. The basis for the proposal is not just that one criterion, but all the others. I mentioned in my speech that it was about the geographical context as well as the ability to provide for local service delivery, and I am happy to repeat that.

The hon. Gentleman said that the savings were just £52 million, but I should emphasise that there is a huge opportunity here to enhance social care and safeguarding services. I do not think anyone in this room would disagree with that outcome. There are better opportunities for improved strategic decision making and improved service delivery. We will be getting quite a lot from this unitarisation, and I really hope that Members from all parties in Somerset and beyond—all the way to Merseyside—will be able to support us as we continue with these proposals.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Somerset (Structural Changes) Order 2022.