Meeting documents

To consider Item 10

The Corporate Planning Manager advised Members that this report was a follow up to the one that was presented to the Authority in October 2016, which outlined the potential implications for the Authority arising from the adoption of a single unitary council model for the areas currently administered by Buckinghamshire County Council (BCC) and the four District Councils, as proposed in the case prepared by BCC and submitted to the Secretary of State in September 2016 for his consideration.

At that time the Authority was aware that the District Councils had commissioned Deloitte to help them prepare an alternative case, full details of which were published on 10 January 2017 and approved for submission to the Secretary of State at special meetings held in parallel by all four District Councils on 16 January 2017. The District Council’s case proposed the adoption of a two unitary model informed by the economic geography of the county as an alternative to the single unitary model proposed by BCC.

The Corporate Planning Manager advised Members that the Authority had therefore carried out a preliminary assessment of the potential implications if a two unitary model was adopted, using the same approach agreed for the BCC proposal. The new evaluation was shown at Appendix 1 and also included for reference purposes, at Appendix 2, was the evaluation of the BCC proposal that was presented to the Authority in October 2016.

Members would have seen from the evaluations that the Authority had not sought to express a view as to which of the proposals was likely to be most beneficial in terms of overall outcomes for the public, council tax payers etc., though obviously the Authority had an interest in this alongside other public service stakeholders. The Authority had confined the scope of the evaluation to identifying potential areas of opportunity and risk for the Authority relative to the existing two tier structure albeit that some comparisons were drawn to illustrate the comparative effect on the Authority’s operations to the extent that they can be determined from the materials presented.

As with the BCC proposal, the evaluation of the risks and benefits were somewhat speculative and the extent to which they may manifest themselves would depend on the detail and manner in which any changes were implemented.

It was also noted that the proposed re-organisation of itself would not be sufficient either to meet the strategic challenges identified or to put local government finances in Buckinghamshire as a whole onto a sustainable basis for the future and achieving this would also depend on the success of other measures to transform service delivery and stimulate the local economy.

The Corporate Planning Manager advised Members that as with the BCC proposal the Authority’s view was that the greatest risks to the Service operationally arises during the transition from the current state to the new two unitary structure, and on balance, a move to a two unitary council structure was likely to be a more complex and therefore risky enterprise from the point of view of maintaining service continuity, than would be the case with a move to a single unitary arrangement, based on the existing BCC organisation and infrastructure.

A Member asked if both reports could be sent to the leaders of all the councils involved (Buckinghamshire County Council, Aylesbury Vale District Council, South Bucks District Council, Wycombe District Council and Chiltern District Council) and this was agreed.

RESOLVED –

1.            that the officers’ initial assessment of the potential opportunities and risk to the Authority arising from the District Councils’ proposal (appendix 1) be noted;

2.            that the potential benefits of the proposal compared with the current two-tier structure of County and District councils be acknowledged and recognised.