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VLK
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Local governmentWhat is your opinion on the Scottish arrangement of local government? The present arrangement has been in place now for 11 years so one should be able to say by now whether it is workable or not.
The present 32 council-areas replaced the former 9 regions and three island authority-areas. Do you think more power should be devolved to these council-areas? Do you think all of the council areas are feasible units or should some of them be merged or should some new ones be created out of the present ones?
It is interesting to compare different countries how they have organised their local government. The Scandinavian countries have their local government arrangement with municipalities as the basic unit of local authority. In Norway and Finland there are over 400 municipalities, in both countries there is widespread unanimity that number is far too high for countries of their size and there are plans to merge several municipalities. In Denmark there was recently an overhaul of the local government structure as former 13 regions were replaced with five regions and former 290 municipalities with 100 or so municipalities.
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Holebender
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I think the present system is better than the previous regions and districts set-up where nobody really knew which authority had jurisdiction over what. However, the present local authority area boundaries were largely gerrymandered by the Conservative government which set them up to try to create little pockets of Conservatism among the Labour fiefs. This seems particularly true in the Central Belt. I would therefore favour retention of the single layer of local government but would redraw the boundaries in some areas so that they were more representative.
I'd also like to see my old county of Kincardineshire back, but I suppose I can live with Aberdeenshire.
When it comes to local government finances, I'd like to see local authorities responsible for raising all their own revenue without any sort of central funding. However things which are national requirements like roads and education, along with national assets like museums and art galleries, shouldn't be controlled or financed by local government.
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Aventinian
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Well, I'm dissatisfied with the present system, so I'd be happy so see change - however there are several possibilities I'd entertain.
I'm sure I've mentioned before that my full answer to the West Lothian Question involves a Provincial structure (roughly four or so 'provinces' in Scotland, balanced against the English regions etc) with an objective of making the national assemblies pretty much irrelevant as devolution moves on. There would obviously be a need for some sort of district below that - which I believe we could perhaps use to render these local authorities more local.
If unitary local authorities are to remain, I would sincerely like to see the traditional Scottish counties returned to their rightful place in local government. The constant change of borders is - as Holebender rightly observes - only encouraging gerrymandering. Near-constant change is also harmful to accountable government. As a result, I believe the counties (perhaps excepting the present city council areas) are the most agreeable long-term solution to prevent this sort of change.
On a yet more local tier, I think it is very, very important that something is done about what are now called 'communities' - what used to be civil parishes etc. Community councils have no statutory powers of their own, are often completely unelected, are apparently irrelevant to many areas and so forth. What I think would be a progressive move would be accountable, elected mayors for such towns and even villages, with wide-ranging authority to decide local matters with the co-operation of local people or indeed a local community council.
Anyway, excuse the ramble. It's late.
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William_Cleland
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| Aventinian wrote: | | I'm sure I've mentioned before that my full answer to the West Lothian Question involves a Provincial structure (roughly four or so 'provinces' in Scotland, balanced against the English regions etc) with an objective of making the national assemblies pretty much irrelevant as devolution moves on. |
Your scheme won't work unless each of these four provinces and all of the English regions get separate legal systems.
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Niall
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| Aventinian wrote: | | What I think would be a progressive move would be accountable, elected mayors for such towns and even villages, with wide-ranging authority to decide local matters with the co-operation of local people or indeed a local community council. |
Mayors??  In Scotland we have 'PROVOSTS" 
'S mise le meas
Niall.
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VLK
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France is an interesting country as to how they have arranged their regional and local government. They have two regional layers of government and at the bottom being the communes which number no fewer than 36,500. That must mean that each and every village in France is a local administrative unit.
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Aventinian
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| William_Cleland wrote: | | Your scheme won't work unless each of these four provinces and all of the English regions get separate legal systems. |
I don't think we can completely do away with the likes of the Scottish Parliament or whatever is created to address the WLQ in England, but I simply aim to make them less significant.
| Niall wrote: | | Mayors?? In Scotland we have 'PROVOSTS" |
Well I'm not really bothered what we call them, but the point that we already have provosts may count against using that term for a very different official.
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SLG
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| VLK wrote: | | France is an interesting country as to how they have arranged their regional and local government. They have two regional layers of government and at the bottom being the communes which number no fewer than 36,500. That must mean that each and every village in France is a local administrative unit. |
I think this is exactly what we need. Every village and community needs to be empowered much more than it is now.
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Aventinian
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| SLG wrote: | | I think this is exactly what we need. Every village and community needs to be empowered much more than it is now. |
Precisely. Present local government districts are incredibly frustrating; it rather seems that nothing gets done and nobody really cares. If anything, this problem has been made worse by PR in local council elections.
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Dave Coull
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Aventinian wrote "Present local government districts are incredibly frustrating; it rather seems that nothing gets done and nobody really cares. If anything, this problem has been made worse by PR in local council elections."
The introduction of PR in local council elections in Scotland, in May this year, tended to hit the dominant party in any local government district. In much of the central belt that meant the Labour Party. Here in Angus it was the SNP that lost overall control as a result of the new voting system. We now have an administration consisting of an alliance of Tories, Labour, Liberal Democrats, and some alleged "independents" (although some other independent councillors have chosen to remain independent from this alliance). This shaky alliance of strange bedfellows, with its one-vote majority, has managed to get itself into a helluva mess over the only distinctive thing it has planned to do, namely, pulling down the Saltire from council buildings. I say "planned to do" because it remains to be seen whether they will actually be able to do this. They have discovered, much to their astonishment, that, far from it being a case of "nobody really cares", an awful lot of people in Angus who are nothing to do with the SNP actually do care about this, and are strongly opposed to pulling down the Saltire.
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