Pickles paves way for return to committee system
A provision allowing local authorities to ditch cabinets and go back to the committee system will be included in the Local Government Bill, the Communities Secretary has said.
In an interview with blogger Iain Dale in Total Politics, Eric Pickles said: “I don’t care how things are organised. They can have it on the basis of a committee system, on a cabinet basis, on the mayoral system.
"If they want to introduce a choral system, with various members of the council singing sea shanties, I don’t mind, providing it’s accountable, transparent and open. That’s all I need to know.”
The Communities Secretary added that he was “not very interested” in local government restructuring.
He said: “Every single mistake people make is usually tied up with restructuring. I can’t afford for local authorities to take two years out while someone decides who the new chief executive is, where they’re going to have their headquarters, what does their paper look like, going back to their rebranding and all that king of thing.
“I’m much more interested in the formal power structures. Now, I think it makes a lot of sense at a managerial level to merge functions at lower tier authorities.”
The axed regime of Comprehensive Area Assessment was “pointless”, Pickles said in the interview, adding that: “It doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t get a bin emptied. No sure, of course we are going to inspect children’s services but it’s going to be in terms of life threatening right through to personal liberty. Those kinds of things are going to be dealt with. But some of the stuff was pointless. You just became quite good at filling the tick boxes. Nothing actually happened.”
Pickles admitted to Total Politics that his remarks about the uselessness of chief executives were “unfortunate” but insisted they were “all part of the process of trying to get authorities to move together and recognise that they needed to do something, other than be an alternative source of power to the leader of council.”
The Communities Secretary warned that localism did not “mean you go along and do what you like and never hear anything from me”, suggesting he was an “opinionated so-and-so”.
He added that he would not take local authorities’ complaints about a lack of resources seriously if they pay their chief executives over £180,000 if they are a “little district” or more than £200,000 if they are a county. Pickles also called on politicians to show restraint in terms of members’ allowances where they are asking staff to accept a pay freeze.
The interview can be read here.
