Title

The ex-chairman of London Councils, Sir Merrick Cockell, says many of London's borough services can be pooled and provided jointly. After four years chairing London Councils, it is worth reflecting on our achievements and the challenges ahead for local government in London and nationally. Sir Merrick: 'we cannot live the next four years as we did the last'. Since 2006 London Councils has achieved more than a name change that looked outward to Londoners, a reduction of 30 posts and £1m a year saved leading to frozen borough subscriptions. Contrary to many predictions, it has held together with a cross-party executive and portfolio responsibilities allocated proportionately. More importantly it has provided a clearer voice for London local government when it could have been drowned out by Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson. In the lead up to the 2008 mayoral election it called for the city and boroughs to work better together to solve London's problems. This led directly to the London Charter and Congress bringing together for the first time all London's elected leaders, and as importantly, all the heads of key public services. Again, just before the general election we produced a manifesto for Londoners; a cross-party challenge to aspiring governments to decentralise power and give councillors a greater role in holding local public services to account whether in health, policing or getting more Londoners back into work. Only four years ago, it would have been laughable to believe that the three main parties could agree such a detailed set of policies let alone see so many of them echoed in the coalition agreement showing the raised credibility and influence of London local government. But we cannot live the next four years as we did the last and therein lies the challenge, indeed risk to London boroughs. London is the most democratically accountable region in the country. We have a mass of boroughs providing, commissioning or scrutinising local public services. Londoners are closer than anywhere to a councillor they can hold to account or can hold others to account on their behalf. They used that power, often unexpectedly and ruthlessly on 6 May, but in that democratic strength hides the weakness of 33 boroughs. Local government has been talking about shared services for years. Outside London, some districts share a chief executive, some even managing this across county boundaries. In London many councils share waste disposal arrangements very successfully. My own council has joint transportation and legal directors with Hammersmith & Fulham LBC. All good stuff saving decent amounts of money. But, if you asked, say ‘how many trading standards departments should there be in London?' would your answer be, accurately, ‘31'? Perhaps the answer is one, maybe five but it cannot be 31. In London, we cannot any longer afford or justify providing 33 variations of essentially the same services. Nor can we spend the next few years agreeing the principle and carrying out extensive pilots. In short order we are going to have to determine if any services are so distinctive they need to be done by boroughs individually and get on with consolidating the rest. Some could get going now. Many services we commission already are done by the same contractors. Much work has already been done to prepare to manage large contracts collectively and to marry up contract periods. Now we have to get on with tendering cross-borough, more competitive – meaning cheaper – contracts. Some services could be ready to go with revolutionary change. A few months ago I met London's senior librarians. Through Capital Ambition (London's Regional Improvement & Efficiency Partnership and part of London Councils) they had been working on options for the future of libraries, seen by many as politically untouchable. The proposals they considered included a single back office service London-wide. Boroughs would decide what library services they wanted and retain local branding but all the book purchasing, storage, cataloguing and so on would be done centrally. This solution would not only safeguard the most valuable services but find chunky savings at the same time. A proverbial ‘no brainer', surely but will there be the collective political will to change such sensitive services? I know how easy it is to agree the strategic but find it impossible to accept the impact locally. Some will be unable to cope with letting go and not controlling everything. Others will only see themselves selling their services and never the reverse. But the key to this is redefining local democracy. The primary role of councillors must be accountability to the community for local public services whether delivered directly, commissioned or scrutinised. Instead of seeing ourselves as ‘from the council', councillors have to move right into the centre of our community exercising democratic accountability whether the council, police, health service or job centres carry out those local public services. We have to shift from seeing these as ‘our' services to seeing them as services that we have to hold to account for quality and cost on behalf of those we represent. Sir Merrick Cockell is leader of Kensington and Chelsea and stepped down as chairman of London Councils last week

Title

WHITEHALL

We need to share more of London's services

SUBSCRIBE TO CONTINUE READING