Local government reform to create “empowered frontline local councillors” with clear accountability, minister insists

In a written ministerial statement issued on Monday (23 June), Jim McMahon said the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government wants to work with the sector “to co-design an approach which balances the need for consistent structures which allows local flexibility”.

He added that the Government’s programme of reform would “create fewer but more empowered councils, frontline councillors and partners working hand in glove with communities they serve and support preventative and early intervention approaches which are critical to the sustainability of local government, and in driving better outcomes in the neighbourhoods where local people are invested.

“Local people will know exactly where to take local problems and solutions and can work with their frontline councillors to drive visible improvements in the places they are invested in.”

McMahon claimed that when these reforms are implemented, alongside devolution to new regional mayors and strategic authorities, and local government reorganisation, it will ensure that the right powers are in the right places.

“Locally, it will mean that people across England, regardless of where they live, will be able to take issues or concerns to empowered frontline local councillors,” he said.

“These councillors will have a clear and accountable route to act on them, either through neighbourhood structures or by taking them to the Cabinet member responsible for the issue.”

The minister issued a second written ministerial statement yesterday (24 June) on plans to simplify local governance structures, including through the abolition of the committee system.

Two leading local government academics warned today, however, in an essay published by thinktank Localis that nine out of ten councillors may be lost in the process of local government reorganisation, in what the authors describe as a “hollowing-out of local democracy”.