Who calls the shots?

Recent Conservative pronouncements on the role of local authority chief executives and the need for police accountability have grabbed the headlines. Nicholas Dobson looks at what is in store if the party wins the next election.

All right so who really calls the shots in local government? Is it the members, canonised as they are by democratic election? Or is it the officers; the employees who are paid to know a thing or two about the things they are supposed to know about?

In the old days, when Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen stalked the earth, local government life could often seem simpler. Councillors (local people who had often built up huge experience and local political savvy) would set the strategy whilst their officers would give professional advice and carry out the will of t’Committee. And seen through the nostalgic glass of time, many officers and members might now be temped to sing with Mary Hopkin: “Those were the days, my friend”.

For as former Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, never said: “The wind of change is blowing through the local government continent”.  And many fear that with all the huffing and puffing it might end up blowing large parts of the local government house in.

In short, the Conservatives are gathering political strength and their polling performance consistently points to the likelihood of general election victory in May 2010. So their pronouncements on local government issues should be taken seriously.

Time’s up for the chief executive?

On the general issue of officers and members, two recent themes stand out. One is the suggestion by Conservative Party chairman, Eric Pickles, that the post of local authority chief executive could be scrapped. For, given current local government ‘executive arrangements’ (where senior ‘cabinet member’ councillors take a much more hands-on and ‘ministerial’ approach to running their authorities), Pickles has been reported as questioning whether large chief executive salaries are justifiable (The Independent, 3 August 2009).

Whilst the same piece also reported ‘Tory insiders’ as “considering merging the roles of council head and chief executive”, the article also quoted the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers (SOLACE) as pointing out that: “The most successful councils are the ones where politicians elected to take the decisions work closely with excellent strategic managers trained to run large, complex organisations.”

Making the police accountable

A similar theme has been apparent in the Conservative approach to policing. For following the resignation in October 2008 of the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Ian Blair, under pressure from Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, it was announced that Conservative Party policy is to reconfigure police accountability arrangements by installing directly elected police commissioners across England and Wales.

The Conservatives plan for police commissioners to “seek re-election on their record, and answer to the public for their success or failure in reducing crime.” And “Instead of being micromanaged by the Home Secretary, police forces will be directed by, and accountable to, the communities they serve”. This is not, of course, an entirely new bee in the Conservative bonnet. For one of its ancestors was buzzing back in February 2005 when former leader, Michael Howard, released it from his policy hive.

A frosty reception

Not everyone, however, is currently overjoyed at the prospect and many police professionals seem to be amongst the more unhappy of bunnies. For instance on 16 September 2009, the President of the Police Superintendents’ Association, Iain Johnston told its members that there is “no support for directly-elected commissioners within the Police Service” and he urged politicians not to abandon recklessly “the British model of policing, that is admired and respected across the world, for short-term political dogma and theory”.

Clearly, senior politicians – and especially those who might consider themselves to be on the threshold of power – need to take great care before they cause the country to take a hazardous leap. And yet. Can all the voices of discontent truly be said to be entirely dispassionate and unsullied by any trace of self-interest? Are present policing arrangements delivering high levels of user satisfaction across the country? And is everything in the crime and disorder garden primevally lovely?

Surely only the most Panglossian amongst us would give unqualified yeses to these. But whilst frying pans and fires might spring warningly to mind and whilst those governing us must bear an onerous trustee responsibility, it nevertheless does remain the legitimate role of democratically-elected politicians to drive forward policy, even if this might ruffle the feathers of those currently managing the nest.

Different strokes – and strengths

Which returns me to the opening theme about who calls the shots in local government. It is a truism that all public power exercised in a democracy must be properly accountable. Elected politicians find their accountability through the ballot box whilst officers as paid employees, are appointed by and accountable to their employing authorities. All fine and dandy no doubt. But, as T.S. Eliot might have said, between the theory and the practice can fall the shadow.

On the ground, in your local neighbourhood authority, those responsible for serving the public, whether as increasingly professionalized local executive politicians or as top officers, need to find the best way of working together to apply their different skills and attributes to achieve optimum outcomes for those they serve, whatever the formal script says.

For with the right will and positive alignment of varying chemistry, the best senior councillors and officers are able to put two and two together to make a lot more than five for their public. And this is so whatever formal structures may emerge in that ever-changing edifice we call local government. For it is always worth remembering that local authorities are there to serve the public and not those who have a personal career stake in them. And whilst a guide to cat-skinning is beyond the scope of this article, it goes without saying that there is more than one way to achieve this.

Nicholas Dobson is a lawyer specialising in local and public law and is also the Communications Officer for ACSeS – the Association of Council Secretaries and Solicitors.