Rayner told councils shake-up risks 'delivering no savings' unless threshold is met
Angela Rayner’s new unitary local authorities in England would have to represent at least 500,000 people to save billions of pounds, analysis has revealed. Sticking with this total has been described as “absolutely essential” by experts, as local government minister Jim McMahon recently indicated proposals for unitary councils below this number could still be acceptable.
The County Councils Network (CCN) has published a report drawing on new data produced by professional services firm PwC has found that replacing two-tier systems of county and district councils with a new wave of larger authorities with minimum populations of half a million could save at least £1.8billion over five years. The research also shows those savings “reduce dramatically” if county and district authorities are replaced with multiple smaller councils. This would potentially cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds.
The CCN added splitting two-tier areas into 58 new unitary authorities based on a minimum population of 300,000 would cost £850million over five years and “deliver no savings”.
“This is because the greater the number of new unitary councils and the smaller the size, the more costs are incurred from ‘disaggregation’ – the process of splitting up and duplicating county council social care services into multiple new authorities – alongside higher one-off transition costs and lower long-term efficiency savings,” the body said.
Experts added that their analysis “backs up the government decision to include the minimum half a million benchmark, with the figures showing an ‘unsustainable’ increase in the costs of reorganisation from creating dozens more unitary authorities below this population mark”.
It comes after Ms Rayner announced May elections in nine council areas have been postponed for one year amid the reorganisation of local government in England.
Local and national politicians have expressed concerns about the plan, and the local government secretary was accused of plotting to change the boundaries of local councils to absorb Conservative rural strongholds into larger authorities.
In doing so, this would see some parts of England "dominated" by Labour towns, it is claimed.
