Open letter to Jim McMahon MP, Minister of State for Local Government and Devolution, from the Stroud District Council Green group
Dear Minister
On June 24, you announced that the Government intends to abolish the committee system within local government, and force those councils currently operating this model (including Stroud District Council) to transition to the ‘leader and cabinet’ model.
Councils like Stroud District that use the committee system model (and those keen to change to it from the cabinet model) favour it because it is more collaborative, transparent and democratic. The committee system has been used at Stroud District Council for over a decade, supported by Labour, Lib Dem and Green councillors over those years. By giving SDC councillors across all political groups a say in decision-making, the system fosters cross-party collaboration, something we know our communities support and have benefited from as a result.
Your proposals, introduced without consultation, mean that decisions affecting communities in our district – and all those impacted by this announcement – will no longer be taken by cross-party committees of elected councillors debating in a public forum. Instead, the leader and just a handful of councillors will make key decisions on behalf of residents, often behind closed doors.
This is the latest in a series of decisions and proposals from this Labour Government that have been made without consultation, and that strip away the ability of local government to ensure public services deliver for the communities they are intended to serve. This has been a theme of central government decision-making since and including the English Devolution White Paper published last December. Every one of these undermines local democracy, through reducing the power and funding of councils, and taking democratic decisions away from the most local level.
Other examples include the proposal to remove the powers of planning committees to decide many local planning applications, the withdrawal of funding for neighbourhood planning, and the decision to move responsibilities away from the district and county council level to new strategic authorities covering a much wider area, including powers for housing, planning, transport, and skills. These strategic authorities across England are each to be led by one mayor, elected under the first past the post voting system, who will control vast amounts of public money and be subject to less scrutiny and weaker governance structures than current local authorities.
The impact of all these decisions is to allow the central government agenda to be delivered more quickly, with less local oversight, challenge and scrutiny. This is clearly demonstrated through this announcement, as no evidence has been offered to support the abolition of the committee system, and no consultation has been conducted with those affected. In no way can these moves be seen to be about empowering local communities and pushing power out of Whitehall and into the hands of local leaders, which you claim is your aim.
Most importantly, these unwelcome changes will not solve the big problems that local authorities and residents face: tackling social and health inequalities, delivering social housing, building and maintaining public trust, the challenges in special educational provision and social care, and in responding and adapting to a rapidly changing climate. Furthermore, none of your changes meet the urgent need for proper investment in our communities which, as Greens, we feel could easily be funded through taxing wealth fairly.
If this proposed change goes ahead, the Government will further damage democracy and public trust at the local level, reducing transparency, accountability and opportunities for resident engagement in places like Stroud district.
We call on you to reverse this unwelcome, under-informed and dictatorial meddling and let local councils get on with the job. We currently have the freedom to choose what’s right for our communities, which we have been elected to do, and Stroud has benefited from the collaborative and transparent approach to local democracy it has created as a result.
This letter is being copied to Dr Simon Opher, MP for Stroud, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, MP for North Cotswolds and Dr Roz Savage, MP for South Cotswolds.
Signed: The Stroud District Council Green group
Cllr Beki Aldam, Cllr Martin Baxendale, Cllr James Boyle, Cllr Catherine Braun, Cllr Martin Brown, Cllr Sarah Canning, Cllr Jonathan Edmunds, Cllr Helen Fenton, Cllr Marisa Godfrey, Cllr Steve Hyndside, Cllr Cate James-Hodges, Cllr Carol Kambites, Cllr Kate Kay, Cllr Pete Kennedy, Cllr Gareth Kitchen, Cllr Gary Luff, Cllr Martin Pearcy, Cllr Natalie Rothwell-Warn, Cllr Matthew Sargeant, Cllr Lucas Schoemaker, Cllr Moya Shannon, Cllr Gill Thomas, Cllr Chloe Turner, Cllr Tricia Watson
(Pictured: the SDC Green/Labour/Lib Dem cooperative alliance members celebrating 10 years of the alliance in 2022. The sort of collaborative, cross-party working demonstrated by the committee system has played an important role in Stroud District for many years.)