1. How will the Cabinet Secretary ensure greater democratic accountability with any local government reform going forward? OAQ(5)0131(FLG)

Llywydd, the White Paper, ‘Reforming Local Government: Resilient and Renewed’, includes a number of proposals to ensure greater democratic accountability in local government. Consultation responses to this and other aspects of the White Paper are currently being analysed.

Thank you. Cabinet Secretary, Conwy County Borough Council, as you know, are now planning to move in to brand-new, state of the art buildings, with an original estimated cost of £35 million, but, of course, this was under the previous administration. However, freedom of information revelations now show that this cost has risen from £35 million to £58 million and has the potential to rise further. And that is excluding final accounts and associated maintenance fees. This agreement is essentially a private finance initiative by another name. Previously, under the local government reform process, the Minister made it quite clear that capital expenditure of this nature should not be happening. Given that now, but going forward, how will you seek to address in your forthcoming proposed legislation for local government reform that local authorities are not entering into contracts of this kind of nature that will simply, ultimately, incur huge costs on our future generations and, indeed, our council tax payers?

I thank the Member for the question. I have indeed seen the information that was supplied through FOI requests and, as far as I can see, that information does make it clear that all the decisions that led to the information in the public domain were made in full accordance with the council’s own democratic procedures. However, the White Paper, ‘Reforming Local Government: Resilient and Renewed’ does include a proposal for a new legal duty on local authorities to consult with partners and the public in budget setting and to do that annually, and no doubt some of the information that is currently in the public domain would have been in the public domain earlier had that procedure been in place.

Cabinet Secretary, one of the changes that you are proposing is joint boards, which I see as very similar to that of fire and rescue, currently. Do you see the benefits of having joint boards and do you believe that there is great advantage in involving as many members of the local authority as possible in these joint boards so that they can report back not only to their own council, but ensure that they can report back to their own constituents who, ultimately, they, and we, are always responsible to?

Well, I thank Mike Hedges for that question. He’s quite right that the White Paper does propose new regional arrangements exercised through what the White Paper calls ‘joint governance committees’. That model is the one most familiar to local government. It’s the way that cross-border service arrangements are most often currently delivered in Wales. They do draw on other models, such as police authorities in the past, where councillors from different component county councils—I was one, he may well have been one—were sent to represent our county councils on a joint board and then were held accountable to the local authorities from which we proceeded. So, he’s right to say there is a wealth of history in doing things in this way in Wales, and the key to doing them is to make sure that those people who sit on those boards are directly able to account for the decisions they take to their local authorities and to the populations that have elected them.