CHESHIRE WEST & CHESTER COUNCIL: ELECTORAL REVIEW Submission to the Boundary Committee on Council Size. 1 Context 1.1 This submission sets out Cheshire West & Chester Council’s proposal on Council size. This is the first issue to be addressed in the electoral review of the area. The proposal is for a Council of 75 elected Members in Cheshire West & Chester. This proposal was made by resolution of the Council on 2 April 2009 at its first meeting after vesting day, on which it replaced former county and district councils. The three political parties represented on the Council; Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat, concurred in the making of the Council’s resolution. 1.2 The proposal has been formulated having regard to key principles of electoral review; that local government should be convenient to local people and effective. Further to these principles, the Council is of the belief that its proposal will ensure that all roles at political level can be carried out effectively, and will enable the authority to achieve its objective of being an exceptionally excellent Council. 1.3 Cheshire West & Chester is a newly created Unitary Council, delivering by direct provision or by commissioning, the full range of Local Authority services in its area. The range of its products is tremendous - from a direction sign on a footpath to the care of a vulnerable child. The Council has at its heart, the wish to serve the whole community of those who live in, work in, or otherwise visit Cheshire West and Chester. It serves a population of 329,100, the fourth largest of Unitary Local Authorities in the North West and the sixteenth largest in England. The Council covers an area of over 94,000 hectares, (360 square miles). It has a budget which, including spending on schools, is around £500m, reflecting the enormous financial investment in our communities. 1.4 The population of the area is growing, even through a time of economic downturn. Forecast growth over the period to 2023 is 4% of the present total. However, it is not just in terms of total numbers that the population is changing. In 2008, 21% of the population of the area was aged under 18, whilst 18% were aged 65 and over. In 5 years’ time, those groups will be of equal size, and in a further 5 years, up to 2018, the 65 and overs will form 23% of the population whilst under-18s will be the smaller group, 19% of the total. This relative change is reflected in the fact that the total population growth between 2008 and 2013 represents an increase in the number of electors. 1.5 Cheshire West & Chester has major towns and extensive rural tracts. Over half (53%) of the electorate live in areas which are classed urban or predominantly urban, 13% live in areas that are rural or predominantly rural. Reflecting the form of development in the area, some of which is suburban in character, 12% of electors live in areas which are best described as more urban than rural whilst 22% live in areas more rural than urban. Chester, Ellesmere Port, Northwich and Winsford are the largest urban areas, but there are smaller towns and large villages which also provide focal service points for the surrounding rural areas. The rural northern part of the Council’s area is traversed by the M56, providing a fast road route into both Manchester and Liverpool, giving rise to occupation of by commuters, whilst some residents of the southern rural parts of the Borough experience some of the conditions of rural isolation. This profile places different demands on Councillors, some of whom represent wholly urban populations, occupying densely populated areas, whilst others represent dispersed communities in extensive, sparsely populated wards. This affects particularly how they relate to local communities with different characteristics, and significantly, how electors relate to their elected representatives. 1.6 The conditions of an area are often described by reference to the Indices of Deprivation, a series of measures of social and economic characteristics including income, health, education, housing conditions and accessibility to services. These are brought together in the most commonly-reported measure, the Index of Multiple Deprivation. Data are presented by reference to local geographic areas; a jigsaw map of over 32,000 of these areas covers the whole of England. In the diagram below, the population of Cheshire West and Chester is shown by reference to a scale in which these data reporting areas are arranged from those showing the greatest deprivation to those showing the least. Population and Multiple Deprivation 350000 300000 250000 200000 150000 100000 Cumulative Population Cumulative 50000 0 1 112131415161718191 Area Rank of Multiple Deprivation (percentile) 1.7 The diagram shows that Cheshire West & Chester represents, in terms of deprivation, a reflection of England. About 50,000 Cheshire residents live in the most deprived 20% of areas in England whilst around 75,000 live in the least deprived 20%. In many national and European programmes to address deprivation, the areas which are amongst the most deprived 20% nationally are targeted. This does not, of course, mean that in the least deprived areas, there are not individuals in the community who may be experiencing severe deprivation. It means that in their work to address the needs of their constituents, Members of the Council who represent communities in deprived areas will engage with national funding mechanisms, whilst those representing deprived residents of less deprived areas will need to engage with service providers directly. The deprivation data does therefore indicate that within Cheshire West and Chester is a diversity of areas and consequently a diversity of representational issues for elected Councillors, individually and collectively, to address. 1.8 Faced with this, the Council’s vision is of Customer first, Value for Money, Best Practice and highlights the Council’s ambition to place its stakeholders at the heart of everything it does. 1.9 In order to deliver on these aims and Vision, the Council requires clear leadership and full engagement at the Political level. Critical to this will be the number of Councillors available to participate fully in all aspects of the life and work of the Council. This submission sets out proposals which argue for a Council of 75 Members, and the rationale and evidence leading to this conclusion. 2 The Case for the Council’s Proposal. 2.1 The human resource of the Council is considerable; it falls into two categories; paid employees and elected Councillors. Councillors have collective and individual tasks. It is essential for success that the Council has and retains the Councillors with a complimentary range of skill, knowledge and experience to fulfil those tasks. 2.2 Setting the council size figure at an appropriate level, will mean consequently that the collective decision-making and scrutiny workload is appropriately shared and that the number of constituents that each Councillor individually has to represent does not give rise to unmanageable caseloads. The total workload each Councillor will have, in terms of hours required to perform the role, should not be intolerable. Failure to address effectively the task of setting size may lead to fewer people wishing to stand for office and in turn may lead to candidates from less diverse backgrounds, and range of skill, knowledge and experience. Such an outcome would be likely to ill-serve the community as a whole. 2.3 The recent report of the Councillors’ Commission emphasises this point and recommends that the role of the Councillor must be compatible with full- or part- time employment and/or with care responsibilities, for example, the care of family members. This is important, for Councillors with direct experience of the circumstances with which their constituents are faced will ensure that the Council will perform better for those people. The report goes on to suggest that it must be made easier for people, including those that are busy in other fields, whether personal or professional, to serve as Councillors. The clear implication here is that Councillor workloads must be reasonable to enable people from all walks of life to stand for election. 2.4 The 2008 National Census of Local Authority Councillors published in January 2009 by the Local Government Association and IDeA reveals that on average Councillors spend 22 hours per week on Council related business. In non- Metropolitan Unitary Councils this figure was higher at 26.2 hours. For those Members who hold senior positions such as Council and Group Leaders and Members of the Cabinet, the Census confirms that Council work is a full-time occupation. Accordingly the number of Councillors has to be sufficient to allow Members capacity to discharge all of their roles effectively and to have the time to do so. This includes the capacity to engage fully with local communities, a key priority for Cheshire West & Chester Council. 2.5 This leads directly to the question, How Many Councillors Does Cheshire West & Chester Council need? 2.6 The standard approach to solving the question is to consider the number of hours which a Council requires/expects its Members to work on Council business 2.7 This depends on; the definition of the task and its demands the contribution one Councillor can make. 2.8 The Council has set itself the ambition of exceptional excellence. This places particular demands that paid employees and elected Councillors work innovatively and challenge the status quo, and do things differently. The Council’s requirement from the electoral review is that its conclusions reflect and sustain its ambition. 2.9 Cheshire West and Chester currently has 72 elected Members.