Leaders of SODC and Vale of White Horse councils received a letter from the Minister for Local Government, explaining why there will be no decision forthcoming in the near future about a unitary council. (Click on the image to make it bigger.)
Minister for Local Government cites two reasons.
First, Cherwell DC and Oxfordshire CC have just begun a merger, and this is expected to take some years to settle down.
Second, the councils’ acceptance of the Growth Deal has shown that we can collaborate effectively, so a unitary isn’t needed for this purpose.
Cherwell DC opposed the Unitary bid County and South and Vale proposed. Crafty way to scupper that deal, IMO. I thought Oxfordshire County Council sincerely felt the savings and service improvement from creating a Unitary council were necessary for survival. But apparently not. Otherwise, why would they enter into this merger agreement with Charwell, with the real risk that as a consequence of the merger, our future as a Unitary Council would be in jeopardy? As for the merger itself, I don’t see what’s in it for County. Their report on the finances of it all at the time the decision was made (June 18) mention that one of the guiding principles is that this merger should be done with zero cost (or preferable a small savings). I haven’t been able to find an actual financial assessment report.
I feel a need to remind readers that I was the only councillor in all of Oxfordshire who thought the Growth Deal was a bad deal and so voted against it. At the time, I listed many risks that I thought stacked up to Too Many Risks. But admittedly I hadn’t thought of this one – that Government would see the Growth Deal as a valid reason NOT to grant Unitary status. I don’t recall seeing any advice from officers to consider this as a likely risk with a costly outcome, but then officer advice would go to Cabinet, and we who aren’t in Cabinet would never see that. But I didn’t hear the Leader of the council talk about this risk either. So did he know the risk and decide to go for it (Growth Deal) anyway? Is it a case of deciding on the way forward, and then only soliciting (or listening to) advice that supports the view already taken? I hope not. No way for me to know.
But this lack of hearing anything about one BIG risk comes right after hearing Vale’s Leader say that the likely loss-producing outsourcing contract with the five councils partnership was the best decision Cabinet could have made with the information they had at the time. These days, under this administration at Vale, there’s quite a lot of ‘not enough information’. Even the external auditors (Ernst & Young) last year found that the Tory administration had cut jobs and thinned the ranks of Councils’ senior management to the point council was unable to make informed decisions. I worry that this is another one of those decisions.
So a proposal that local councils spent quite a lot of money on (One Oxfordshire, Better Oxfordshire, whatever), wasn’t the Main Thing after all.
I’d like to see the following comparisons:
- Revenue savings projected to come from setting up a unitary council vs revenue income as a result of Growth Bid (not that much revenue in it, tbh) and revenue savings from merger. (I think this looks like a bad trade-off.)
- Total savings to all councils in Oxfordshire from Unitary proposal vs total savings to all councils with merger of Charwell and Oxfordshire County and Growth Deal. (Also seems in favour of Unitary, doesn’t it?)
- Money (income) from Growth Deal as percentage of required infrastructure costs, vs savings from unitary proposal as percentage of operating costs for 6 councils. I can’t predict what this would be. I hope some decision-maker has already asked this and got a good and useful response. I have no idea how big decisions such as these are actually considered in real life.
In fact, the more I list these things, the more the two recent decisions on the merger and the Growth Deal look like short term (hoped-for) resolutions of urgent, short term issues, which fail to take the long view of what we need to ensure the continued viability of Oxfordshire and its people. We do not want Oxfordshire to be the next Northamptonshire. Or Lancashire.
I’m prepared to be proven wrong. Ready? Go!