Government amendments to committee system – an explainer

Introduction

Government has tabled an amendment to the English Devolution Bill to allow some councils operating the committee system to continue doing so (for a little while, at least). We’ve taken a more detailed look at this amendment to explore what it means for councils – including councils who are likely to go through LGR in the coming years.

The current position

Councils in England, since 2011, have been able to adopt one of four governance models.

• Leader-Cabinet, operated by the vast majority of English councils, where decision-making is focused on a Leader elected by council and a cabinet that they appoint;
• Mayor-Cabinet, operated by 13 councils, where a directly elected mayor appoints a cabinet to make decisions;
• The committee system. CfGS is currently aware it is operated by 36 councils, where council appoints a number of cross-party committees to make decisions;
• “Prescribed arrangements”, whereby a council can make an application to the Secretary of State to adopt a form of governance not described above.

Councils making a change from one governance option to another must go through one of two legal processes. They can either:

• Make a council resolution committing to a change, in which case the change takes effect following the annual general meeting of the council specified in the resolution. If changing by way of resolution the council is locked in to the new arrangements for five years;
• Hold a referendum – either proactively, or as the result of a local petition which reaches a legally-defined threshold of signatures. If changing by way of a referendum any future governance changes may only take place as a result of a referendum, and the Council is then locked into the new arrangements for 10 years.

CfGS published the second edition of guidance aimed to support councils to consider their options, “Rethinking governance”, in 2020.

The announcement and the Bill

Before looking at the amendment, we should return to Government’s announcement of the measures relating to the committee system shortly before the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill was first introduced in July. The announcement described it as “unclear, duplicative, and wasteful, leading to slower, less efficient decision-making.”

The introduction of the Bill in July was unambiguous in its intent to deliver the full abolition of the committee system. Following the passage of the Bill, all committee system authorities would need to make an immediate transition to the Leader-Cabinet system – although some discretion would be applied to the needs of those councils undergoing reorganisation.

Councils operating the Mayoral model would be able to continue with current arrangements.

The majority of committee system authorities are shire districts. Assuming that reorganisation proceeds as planned this would have meant that only nine councils in England would operate the committee system. It is those councils, in the Bill as originally drafted, that would all have been obliged to change.

It was clear that this would cause frustration and challenge for some councils. In Sheffield and Bristol, recent changes had been made as the result of referendums. Many in Sheffield – politicians and local activists – felt that Government’s decision was particularly unreasonable, because the adoption of the committee system there was part of a wider civic settlement about the council’s democratic systems, that arose as a result of the much-publicised events relating to the removal of street trees.

The amendments

On 19 November, Government tabled two connected amendments (agreed at Report stage) which grant the committee system a temporary reprieve. This reprieve, however, will apply to just three councils.

It appears Government is accepting – in a limited way – objections that the move to end the committee system ignored local decision-making. But the two amendments do not change the ultimate outcome: councils will still have to change to Leader-Cabinet in time. Instead, this change from Government acknowledges the fact that the law as it stands now “protects” new governance arrangements for five years (if the change is made as a result of a council resolution) or 10 years (if made as a result of a referendum), as we explained above.

So what do the amendments actually do?

Firstly, they introduce two new categories for councils’ committee systems.

• “Protected”. A committee system is protected if it:
  • Became or remained the local authority’s governance arrangements following a referendum, and the 10 year referendum protection period has not ended on the day that the section of the Bill, once enacted, commences;
  • Became or remained the local authority’s governance arrangements by virtue of a resolution (but not following a referendum), and the five-year resolution protection period has not ended on the date of commencement.
• “Not protected”. A committee system not meeting these requirements.

“Not protected” committee system councils will still need to move to a Leader-Cabinet system in the way originally set out in the Bill. No resolution of council or referendum will be required. These councils will need to move to Leader-Cabinet before the end of one year, following the date that the relevant section of the Bill commences.

For councils that find their committee system is “protected” they won’t simply be able to continue to operate the committee system forever. Firstly, they will need to undertake and publish a “review” of whether the council should move to a Leader-Cabinet system. This review must be carried out before the end of one year following the date of commencement of the relevant section of the Bill – described as the “decision period”.

The review has to “have regard to the need to secure effective and convenient local government” for the area, and – if it concludes that the committee system is the right option – it needs to “include the reasons” why that is the case.

Once the review is published, the council must choose to do one of three things – all within the decision period:

• By resolution agree to continue to operate the committee system;
• By resolution agree to move to Leader-Cabinet
• Carry out a referendum to move to Leader-Cabinet (subject to some tweaks to the rules about the circumstances in which petitions can continue to trigger referendums).

In future, a committee system authority will still be able to move to Leader-Cabinet (either by resolution or referendum). Otherwise, the council’s governance arrangements can continue for perpetuity – but there is a small caveat, included below.

Who is this amendment for?

If you are an officer or member at Sheffield City Council, Bristol City Council or Isle of Wight Council – congratulations! This amendment applies to you.

It does not, however, apply to any other council.

The other unitary councils who will continue to exist, post-LGR, and currently operate the committee system won’t benefit from it as they changed their governance arrangements longer ago than the fiveor 10-year “protection” period.

Shire districts and shire counties that are going through LGR will receive a temporary reprieve and won’t be expected to change their governance arrangements before they are abolished.

This means that, in a few years’ time (and after LGR has run its course), there will be a maximum of three councils across England which continue to operate the committee system, alongside a slightly larger but still small cohort of councils operating mayoral arrangements.

Government has described these as “legacy” governance arrangements.

Can other councils get around this somehow, and keep hold of the committee system?

Could a council operating the committee system make a resolution confirming that they propose to continue operating the committee system in order to reset the timer on the five-year protection period?

No, this won’t work. The relevant section of the 2000 Local Goverment Act provides that resolutions – for this purpose – have trigger a change to existing arrangements. By definition, a resolution to keep things the same doesn’t have the same effect. This is even the case if a council were to make significant changes to the committee structure – because the “change” in question must be to the overall governance option.

What will happen in the future?

Initially, I read the amendments as saying that once the “protection period” ended – that is, five years following a resolution or 10 years following a referendum – a “protected” committee system would automatically move into the “non-protected” category and a council would then be obliged to move to leader-cabinet – giving affected councils a temporary rather than a permanent reprieve. This is not however the case (in my defence the amendments’ use of the words “protection period” is, at first sight, a bit ambiguous).

In theory, what we have instead is a situation whereby – if a council chooses to continue to operate the committee system during the one year “decision period” – it could retain the committee system for as long as it wishes.

In practice, I suspect that this will not be the case. The use of the word “legacy” by Government to describe these arrangements looks like a statement of future intent. Of course, we can’t predict what future this Government’s successors will do but it is difficult to imagine that these new arrangements are designed to be indefinitely sustainable.

Either a future government undoes these changes – as we saw when the Localism Act 2011 expanded governance options for councils – or a future government will “finish the job” and abolish both the committee, and mayoral, systems outright.

Then again, the need for neatness and consistency is not always top of the agenda for legislators. Whatever happens, it may be difficult for councils that are not covered by the amendments to accept that some of their peers have a reprieve based on their later adoption of the committee system.