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Page 31 Agenda Item 3 Draft response from the London Borough of Sutton to the consultation paper Local Leadership and Public Trust : Openness and accountability in Local and London Government Dear Mr Hawthorne Local Leadership and Public Trust : Openness and accountability in local and London Government We are pleased to make this response to your consultation paper, and welcome the clarity of this paper and the opportunity it provides to raise the profile of these important issues and test the thinking and practice of recent years. In this response, we have been guided by the prompts in your consultation paper which invite comment. 2.19 You are interested to establish views on whether certain models of leadership or decision making in local government better support the seven principles of public life. You are also interested in the hypothesis that an elected mayor might help rebuild public confidence and trust in a failing local authority. Sutton Council, like most authorities in London and the country, adopted the leader and cabinet system following the 2000 Act. It is important for the Committee to understand why the overwhelming majority of councils chose this route. The traditions of British local government are rooted in a system where all councillors share in the decision making of their area, and where they are equal in this role. The separation of executive and scrutiny roles of members fundamentally challenges this tradition, so that a small number of councillors (up to ten in the cabinet system, only one in a directly elected mayoral system) hold this decision making power. The speed with which the changes were introduced following the election of the Labour government in 1997 provided little opportunity for experimentation or a developed sense of ownership of what was a fundamental change to the organisation of councils; and the scale of the new government’s mandate implied an inevitability in the change. Assertions were made claiming the superiority of the new system – notably, that the ‘decision makers’ would be better known and that the new system would make decision making more transparent and avoid the syndrome of decisions being made in private, usually in political groups, and merely ‘rubber stamped’ in public. It is notable that the new executive/scrutiny separations are largely an importing of the Westminster model of working; but only in a partial sense. In a number of important areas, there are differences : for example, at a national level, the Cabinet meets in private. It is not possible to see the papers and advice that are provided to Cabinet. Civil Servants are Agenda Item 3 Page 32 accountable only to the Government, wheras local government officers are accountable to the entire Council. A combination of the asymmetry of the Westminster/local government model with the haste with which it was introduced and the lack of piloting of the new arrangements made it highly likely that most councils would choose what they perceived as the model of ‘least change’. This is precisely what happened. The lack of appetite that councils showed for structural change was at least matched by the public response. All councils were required to consult upon their preference for one of the proposed new models. Few found any public interest in what many residents found an arcane issue. This was reflected in those areas that held a referendum – as your paper points out,in areas where referenda were held on the prospect of a directly elected mayor,the number that were successful was matched by twice the number that were unsuccessful. There may well be opinion polling evidence to support the contention that directly elected mayors are better known in their areas and therefore more accountable than leaders of councils with a cabinet system of governance. We would expect this to be the case, and this is clearly a great strength of the mayoral system. The four directly elected mayors in London – Newham, Hackney, Lewisham and the Mayor of London – have each brought a clarity and visibility to leadership in their areas, and we would want to congratulate them on their achievements and recognise this. However, there are counter-examples in other parts of the country where the mayoral experiment has not been successful in raising standards and promoting the seven principles of public life. Critically, we would argue that there are very plausible and highly effective alternatives to the mayoral system : the leader and cabinet system is one; the (now abandoned) committee system is another. The notion of collective and participative leadership amongst elected members has value and we believe contributes to the effectiveness of some of the best performing local authorities, including our own. But this appears to be held in less esteem than the concentration of power in the hands of an individual. We note that the model of a directly elected mayor is a phenomenon in England only. We are curious as to why it is either not permitted or has not been adopted in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Some might argue that the remarkable improvement in the performance of local government over the last ten years – in both efficiency and the quality of services – can in part be attributed to the separation of executive from scrutiny functions. This is a possibility, but we believe it is more likely to be a function of the greater investment in public services coupled with the enormous focus on Best Value, continuous improvement and transparency of service outcomes that has created a performance culture in almost every council in the country. Research and experience suggests that the primary drivers of performance in a local authority are the quality of co-leadership between the most senior members and officers; other variables – including the level of financing, geographical location or internal structure – shows no such correlation with performance. Page 33 Agenda Item 3 In summary, we believe that the Government imposed the 2000 changes upon local government, with very low levels of evidence to support the merits of such a dramatic change and exceptionally low levels of councillor and resident support. These changes may have merits in some places, but we do not believe successful structural and cultural change can be imposed. A process of persuasion and evidence to support change is needed. We believe the Government should provide the opportunity for councils to have directly elected mayors, alongside the opportunity for other structures – including the traditional committee system. We do not believe that national Government should be in the habit of imposing change upon local government that is about internal structures rather than standards and outcomes, where we believe Government has an important role. However, this habit is now deeply entrenched, and seen more recently in the imposition of the separation of Children’s Services from Adult Services – again, with no evidence base to support change and now significant experience to suggest disbenefits may out weigh benefits. 2.29 You are interested in views on the accountability framework for local government and the effectiveness of scrutiny. We believe that the measures to strengthen standards and openness that you set out in paragraphs 2.25-2.28 are welcome and have gained the support of stakeholders, councillors and officers. Local government is a more open and transparent place as a consequence of these changes. Local Standards Committees are an important part of our governance architecture, and we would want to maintain them. You also ask about scrutiny. It is important to be clear that scrutiny was not invented in the 2000 Act. There was plenty of scrutiny in the old committee structure. In councils with an active opposition, every committee was a scrutiny committee, because opposition members on the committee would ensure that assumptions were challenged and they would seek to ensure that decisions were well founded before they were made. Having said that, councils can and do make the new structure work. Sutton Council has invested significant officer and member time and energy into ensuring that scrutiny ‘adds value’ to service outcomes. In our inspections, we are challenged to demonstrate this with hard evidence, and we are successful in doing so. Scrutiny of the health service has been a welcome dimension of the new arrangements. It supports a council’s community leadership role and is an important antidote to what would otherwise be a remote and locally unaccountable health service. We believe that all publicly funded bodies should have a statutory obligation to cooperate with a local authority in its scrutiny role – this would include all publicly funded schools, all parts of the health service (including GPs and foundation trusts) and the all other locally delivered public services. You ask if there is a tension between ‘openness’ and ‘getting things done’. In reality, certainly in Sutton, the essence of a local council is the ability to do both. There is not necessarily a contradiction between the two, although balancing the two requirements makes local government an especially complex environment. We would not, however, want to see ‘openness’ compromised; it is a fundamental part of local government’s DNA and is (for example) one of the reasons that the Government’s initial intention that Cabinets should be held in private was so strongly contested and ultimately overturned. Agenda Item 3 Page 34 Although the consultation paper does not specifically ask a question about the role of the lead member for children’s services, you do refer to this role at paragraph 2.24. It is correct to say that this is an onerous and exacting role, typically taking responsibility for three quarters of a council’s expenditure. You are right to question the relationship between this councillor and the Leader/Mayor’s overall responsibility for the authority.

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