Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad

I have drafts of several forthcoming articles for CloudWisdom that are linked to longer papers on electricity markets and related issues whose publication schedules are outside my control. Hence, I have written this brief comment piece about the UK government’s plan to reorganise local government in England. Please watch out for what should be several larger articles over the next few weeks.

The aphorism in the title, which in spirit goes back to classical times in the play Antigone by Sophocles, is the only reasonable reaction to the current UK government’s proposals to reorganise local government in England.

Tinkering with local government structures has been a regular preoccupation of UK governments for the last 50 years going back to the Redcliffe-Maud Commission whose report was published in 1969. In effect, the current proposals amount to Redcliffe-Maud redux. The Commission recommended that all lower tiers of local government should be merged to form unitary authorities covering up to 1 million people. Adjusted for growth in the population of England over the last six decades, this corresponds to the current ideal of authorities covering up to 1.3 million people.

In addition, The Commission recommended the formation of four metropolitan authorities – Greater London, Greater Manchester, West Midlands and Merseyside – plus 8 provincial authorities which are close to what are now called planning regions.

The Commission’s focus was on achieving economies of administrative scale. It argued that large unitary authorities were required to ensure the “efficient” delivery of physical environment services (planning, transport) and personal services (education, housing, social services). This has little to do with the core idea of economic efficiency of meeting differing needs and preferences in a cost-effective manner.

As anyone who has read my article on devolution vs decentralisation may recall, this is completely at variance with local government arrangements in most of Europe and other developed countries. It is pure Westminster dogma, which is not surprising given the background of the members of the Redcliffe-Maud Commission. These included the former Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, Baroness Evelyn Sharp, who was very forceful and an archetype of the Sir Humphrey mentality.

There is a peculiar blindness about senior Westminster bureaucrats. Some, especially in past generations, were or are extremely bright and competent, but their general attitude towards both politicians and local government is one of condescension. Think of the lyric from My Fair Lady given to Professor Higgins: “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” without the sexist element. In the minds of such officials, local government should be organised and run in a manner corresponding to the Platonic view of the Westminster bureaucracy.

Of course, this is mostly nonsense. The logic of administrative economies is that fewer chief executives, councillors, and buildings should imply lower overheads and more efficient procurement. This ignores the iron laws of bureaucracy. Large budgets mean that chief executives are paid more, chief executives acquire deputies and deputies acquire assistant deputies – all on high salaries. The expected savings on staff costs are spent on bureaucratic functions from HR to public relations.

Operational decisions that could be made locally in small authorities are either not made at all or become bogged down in the process of developing bureaucratic rules, and then exceptions to those rules, and then exceptions to those exceptions. The list of exceptions grows to the point where no one understands them or how different regulations interact. The famous example is the US Federal Tax Code which grew from 2,600 pages in 2014 to 6.900 pages in 2020. The UK’s tax code is over 21,000 pages, though if you add explanatory material the US tax code is over 80,000 pages.

On top of this, the true madness is that we have ample evidence that large unitary authorities don’t work well in the UK’s political and administrative system. From 1975 to 1996 Scotland’s local government was organised into 9 regional authorities with the largest being Strathclyde Region (based in Glasgow), followed by Lothian Region (based in Edinburgh), and Grampian Region (based in Aberdeen).[1] This arrangement was an unambiguous failure, which is why it was unscrambled after 21 years and replaced with a system of 32 smaller unitary authorities.

Strathclyde Region was worst example – a heterogeneous authority responsible for urban deprivation in Glasgow to the islands of Arran, Mull and Tiree. Naturally, the authority was dominated by the Glasgow metropolitan area with the consequence that large parts of the region felt entirely neglected by an uninterested and incompetent local authority.

Things were not much better in Lothian Region which covered the area from Dunbar in the east to Linlithgow in the west. Again, this was dominated by the Edinburgh metropolitan area whose interests were very different from those of rural communities around the edges of the region.

There are few living in the current local authorities of Argyll & Bute or East Lothian who would want to go back to being part of the Strathclyde or Lothian Regions. Yet, what the current government wants to do in England runs directly counter to the lessons that might be learned from that failure.

The madness goes even further. The UK government’s stated priority is to promote economic growth. Its primary – almost its only – instrument to promote economic growth is planning reform in England, as it has limited or no powers in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The government already controls planning decisions for what are called Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects which are dealt with by the national Planning Inspectorate. Hence, planning reform must focus on the performance of local authority planning departments. Where are they to be found? In precisely the authorities that will be merged either vertically or horizontally to create larger unitary authorities.

An observer from Mars or even from France might assume that this is one of Baldrick’s cunning plans to sabotage the Labour Government’s prospects. Still, the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Chancellor have all signed off on this cunning plan. The staff of local authority planning departments in England will be obsessed for at least two years with manoeuvring about jobs, future responsibilities, and where they will work. Continuity of responsibilities will be lost, and all kinds of issues will slip through the inevitable cracks. The outcome will be decisions that are either delayed and/or extremely vulnerable to legal challenges as based on erroneous or incomplete information.

These are only the immediate effects of the government’s simultaneous efforts to reform both the structure of local government and local planning. The bigger – and longer term – issue is one of consent. Reform of the planning system is seen as necessary to counteract the response of local populations and interest groups to projects that may have a significant detrimental impact on their quality of life for which no compensation or other means of gaining consent have been offered.

It is uncertain whether the planning reforms proposed will achieve what the government expects. There is a very large amount of environmental law based on EU directives that can be used to trip up developers but which the government seems to be unwilling to repeal. Thus, the importance of project developers behaving generously as part of a strategy to gain public consent will remain crucial.

Now, imagine a project proposed in either Ilfracombe (North Devon District) or Hartland (Torridge District), small towns a long way from Exeter where the unitary authority for Devon will be based. Would developers devote their money and effort to obtain local support for the projects in those towns or in Exeter? We know the answer from lots of experience in Scotland. They would focus on Exeter – giving money to Exeter Rugby Club or organisations controlled by Devon Council rather than to local organisations in North Devon or Hartland.

Project developers aren’t usually interested in local consent, though arguably that is short-sighted. They want to use their resources to obtain a favourable decision. That has the consequence of generating large amounts of local distrust which is what fuels local opposition and legal challenges. By merging district councils into a unitary authority and transferring responsibility for planning decisions away from local decision-makers the government’s policy increases the chances that planning approvals will be seen as illegitimate and be subject to legal challenges. It may believe that other planning reforms will reduce the prospects of successful challenges, but the time and costs of dealing with legal challenges will remain significant. In any case, the belief that the reforms will reverse two decades of legislation and legal decisions on which such challenges rest is equally mad.

To return to the title of this article. Whether the current government is mad or merely so incompetent that it is unable to understand and avoid the obvious consequences of their policies is ultimately irrelevant. What does matter is that it seems to be willingly the author of its ineffectiveness and eventual demise. Whom the gods would destroy - whether via arrogance, incompetence, or madness – the end is the same.

[1] There were district councils under the regional authorities, but their responsibilities were limited primarily to housing and libraries. Nominally, district councils were responsible for local planning but regional authorities controlled strategic planning and used their greater resources to control most major planning decisions