J.G.Harston
Lib Dem
Leave-voting Brexit-supporting Liberal Democrat
Posts: 14,846 
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Post by J.G.Harston on Oct 9, 2016 18:45:45 GMT
Brum, Solihull and Coventry:  |
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Post by John Chanin on Oct 9, 2016 18:58:32 GMT
Expand all the cities (over 250,000) to include the whole urban area, and make them unitaries. What's left can be unitaries too, although I don't feel strongly about for example North Yorkshire or Norfolk, where a 2 tier system makes some sense.
Bournemouth, Southampton, Portsmouth, Nottingham, Leicester, Stoke, Hull would all get much larger. Bristol would get a bit larger. Reading takes in most of Wokingham District. Middlesbrough & Stockton are merged, together with Eston etc. Luton, Dunstable & Houghton go together. Southend absorbs Castle Point & most of Rochford.
I don't like unitaries smaller than about 200,000, and over 500,000 they become a bit remote, so there is a case for splitting Birmingham. The big cities need a City Region authority, so there is a second quasi regional tier here (the metropolitan counties).
Most of the London boroughs are too small and mergers would be useful. In a 2 tier system districts of less than about 60,000 are inefficient and non-viable.
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Post by Lord Twaddleford on Oct 9, 2016 19:08:02 GMT
Well my own views are well known, basically I'd go for a two tier structure in Wales, 3 regions based on Swansea, Cardiff and Newport, and two rural ones based on mid and west Wales, one for North Wales. Below them I'd have around 25 - 30 district councils and below them maybe 300 or so community councils. The regions would also take over the health authorities, fire, police and ambulance, run social services, education, waste disposal, transport, structural planning, and economic development. District councils to look after housing, licensing, leisure, culture, town and country planning (within the regional structural plans) consumer protection and other functions unless carried out by community councils. Community councils will run allotments, cemeteries, war memorials, public conveniences, maintain public footpaths, open spaces, parks and such community facilities that are appropriate to their communities plus grant aid local organisations. All would be elected by STV in multi member divisions. Coupled with reorganisation of boundaries we need a reorganisation of finances. I'd hand the first 5p in the pound of both income tax and VAT, split 70% region, 25% district and 5% community. Plus revenue from licenses, commercial ventures, rent and a property tax. Also a replacement for business rates based on turn over and split the same way as income tax and VAT. In addition equalisation payment from the Welsh government based on need. I must agree that local government in Wales would probably fair better using the two-tier system, though personally I'd opt more for what amounts to an effective restoration of the pre-1996 counties, albeit keeping authorities such as Cardiff (and possibly Swansea and Newport too) as unitaries. However, I can imagine that an attempt to restore the old 1974-96 counties might not be feasible in some cases, particularly if one were to try and revive the old counties of Gwynedd and Clwyd, where Conwy CBC in particular is composed of bits of both; to de-merger Conwy and then re-merge the restored Aberconwy and Colwyn districts with their respective counties might prove to be rather impractical. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Oct 9, 2016 19:26:58 GMT
Cap of no more than two thirds of the seats on any council being held by any one party - one party states are always badly run. How the hell do you enforce this? To be sure PR would have the effect of doing that almost everywhere including some examples that are literally one-party states such as East Herts which elected a full slate of Tory councillors with barely 50% of the vote. But in for example Knowsley, it's not uncommon for Labour to get 70 or 75% of the vote in which case even with PR they would win (and be quite entitled to) over two thirds of the seats. What are you going to do? Co-opt councillors from parties that people didn't vote for to displace those they did ? |
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Post by warofdreams on Oct 9, 2016 20:24:22 GMT
Cap of no more than two thirds of the seats on any council being held by any one party - one party states are always badly run. How the hell do you enforce this? To be sure PR would have the effect of doing that almost everywhere including some examples that are literally one-party states such as East Herts which elected a full slate of Tory councillors with barely 50% of the vote. But in for example Knowsley, it's not uncommon for Labour to get 70 or 75% of the vote in which case even with PR they would win (and be quite entitled to) over two thirds of the seats. What are you going to do? Co-opt councillors from parties that people didn't vote for to displace those they did ? Even if you did that, a party could easily avoid this by setting up some sort of proxy to take the otherwise wasted votes - either recommending votes for sympathetic independents, or possibly creating independent local parties, like the various local residents groups in Epsom and Ewell. |
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Harry Hayfield
Green
Cavalier Gentleman (as in 17th century Cavalier)
Posts: 2,922
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Post by Harry Hayfield on Oct 9, 2016 20:42:58 GMT
My biggest grumble with local government is multi member wards. For instance here in Wales we have not only three member wards, but a few four member wards and, if you can believe a five member ward. If we are having elections under the First Past the Post system (which we have) then it should be single member wards only.
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peterl
Green
Congratulations President Trump
Posts: 8,474
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Post by peterl on Oct 9, 2016 20:45:26 GMT
Cap of no more than two thirds of the seats on any council being held by any one party - one party states are always badly run. How the hell do you enforce this? To be sure PR would have the effect of doing that almost everywhere including some examples that are literally one-party states such as East Herts which elected a full slate of Tory councillors with barely 50% of the vote. But in for example Knowsley, it's not uncommon for Labour to get 70 or 75% of the vote in which case even with PR they would win (and be quite entitled to) over two thirds of the seats. What are you going to do? Co-opt councillors from parties that people didn't vote for to displace those they did ? I have been giving that some thought. One possibility is that at the point at the count when the threshold has been met, all remaining candidates of that party are simply disregarded. That might be a little unfair, so a better alternative might be to take the highest scoring candidates. If a council has 60 seats and there is a two-thirds maximum for any one party, and Labour say would have won more than 40 seats, then only the top 40 vote getters are elected, and the rest are not in favour of ensuring an opposition. This is to the benefit of everyone since democracy needs an opposition to function. |
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Post by greenhert on Oct 9, 2016 20:51:46 GMT
Expand all the cities (over 250,000) to include the whole urban area, and make them unitaries. What's left can be unitaries too, although I don't feel strongly about for example North Yorkshire or Norfolk, where a 2 tier system makes some sense. Bournemouth, Southampton, Portsmouth, Nottingham, Leicester, Stoke, Hull would all get much larger. Bristol would get a bit larger. Reading takes in most of Wokingham District. Middlesbrough & Stockton are merged, together with Eston etc. Luton, Dunstable & Houghton go together. Southend absorbs Castle Point & most of Rochford. I don't like unitaries smaller than about 200,000, and over 500,000 they become a bit remote, so there is a case for splitting Birmingham. The big cities need a City Region authority, so there is a second quasi regional tier here (the metropolitan counties). Most of the London boroughs are too small and mergers would be useful. In a 2 tier system districts of less than about 60,000 are inefficient and non-viable. The only thing you can really do with Birmingham in that regard is remove Sutton Coldfield from its remit.
Unlike Greater London and the coastal conurbations, the city of Birmingham does not have a patchwork nature-it is all basically one unit.
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Post by Lord Twaddleford on Oct 9, 2016 20:53:07 GMT
How the hell do you enforce this? To be sure PR would have the effect of doing that almost everywhere including some examples that are literally one-party states such as East Herts which elected a full slate of Tory councillors with barely 50% of the vote. But in for example Knowsley, it's not uncommon for Labour to get 70 or 75% of the vote in which case even with PR they would win (and be quite entitled to) over two thirds of the seats. What are you going to do? Co-opt councillors from parties that people didn't vote for to displace those they did ? I have been giving that some thought. One possibility is that at the point at the count when the threshold has been met, all remaining candidates of that party are simply disregarded. That might be a little unfair, so a better alternative might be to take the highest scoring candidates. If a council has 60 seats and there is a two-thirds maximum for any one party, and Labour say would have won more than 40 seats, then only the top 40 vote getters are elected, and the rest are not in favour of ensuring an opposition. This is to the benefit of everyone since democracy needs an opposition to function. Ugh, don't like it. Whilst having a functioning oppositions is vital to the healthy development of any democratic system, just as important is that the voters' choices are respected, some which I feel your suggested system would not do. If a party manages to gain a super/hypermajority under a PR system, I think the best thing that anyone can hope for is that the electorate eventually gets fed up and votes for someone else when this unopposed administration finally cocks up royal. Also, I can imagine that this system you suggest would likely breed up quite a bit of acrimony and resentment (and questioning of legitimacy) amongst councillors, particulary from those whose party won big then got stiffed, towards the councillors from the party/parties that got more seats than they were theoretically entitled to. |
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J.G.Harston
Lib Dem
Leave-voting Brexit-supporting Liberal Democrat
Posts: 14,846
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Post by J.G.Harston on Oct 9, 2016 20:56:34 GMT
I have been giving that some thought. One possibility is that at the point at the count when the threshold has been met, all remaining candidates of that party are simply disregarded. That might be a little unfair, so a better alternative might be to take the highest scoring candidates. If a council has 60 seats and there is a two-thirds maximum for any one party, and Labour say would have won more than 40 seats, then only the top 40 vote getters are elected, and the rest are not in favour of ensuring an opposition. This is to the benefit of everyone since democracy needs an opposition to function. So, at 11:33pm at Little Wallop Primary School the returning office declares Fred (Party A), Jim (Party A) and Hazel (Party B) elected. Then at 11:42pm somebody comes running in, panting, and says: woah! Midquiquitte has just elected two Party A members with more votes than here, taking them over 40 in total, you've got to invalidate the declaration you've just made. All these quota-type schemes all suffer from the flaw of telling the voters: sorry, you weren't actually allowed to vote the way you did; or telling candidates: sorry, you're not allowed to stand because of what's in your head/in your trousers/whatever. |
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J.G.Harston
Lib Dem
Leave-voting Brexit-supporting Liberal Democrat
Posts: 14,846
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Post by J.G.Harston on Oct 9, 2016 21:03:15 GMT
No unitary authorities except for large cities The opposite of what I propose. If local authorities are going to raise most of their own funding which I regard as essential to make local democracy viable and worth having, then they have to be large enough that they contain both richer and poorer areas. In rural areas this makes them too large to be Unitary and a better model is district committees. In large urban authorities, they only work if large enough to cover the whole travel to work area and again include both the inner city deprived wards and affluent suburban hinterland. This leaves the likes of Salford or West Bromwich with no meaningful local government. Again district committees might work, but for these I would consider Boroughs as the scale will be large enough to justify it. Certain large urban areas need to be some form of "Greater X". Greater London and Greater Manchester. Some sui generis system needs to be worked out for "Greater Birmingham". As mentioned above, Brum grew to what it is as a single homogeneous authority, it's not something than can be sliced up, but similarly I don't think the West Midlands Met is the equivalant of Greater Manchester. |
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peterl
Green
Congratulations President Trump
Posts: 8,474
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Post by peterl on Oct 9, 2016 21:15:12 GMT
I have been giving that some thought. One possibility is that at the point at the count when the threshold has been met, all remaining candidates of that party are simply disregarded. That might be a little unfair, so a better alternative might be to take the highest scoring candidates. If a council has 60 seats and there is a two-thirds maximum for any one party, and Labour say would have won more than 40 seats, then only the top 40 vote getters are elected, and the rest are not in favour of ensuring an opposition. This is to the benefit of everyone since democracy needs an opposition to function. So, at 11:33pm at Little Wallop Primary School the returning office declares Fred (Party A), Jim (Party A) and Hazel (Party B) elected. Then at 11:42pm somebody comes running in, panting, and says: woah! Midquiquitte has just elected two Party A members with more votes than here, taking them over 40 in total, you've got to invalidate the declaration you've just made. All these quota-type schemes all suffer from the flaw of telling the voters: sorry, you weren't actually allowed to vote the way you did; or telling candidates: sorry, you're not allowed to stand because of what's in your head/in your trousers/whatever. The logistics of it would probably be that the returning officer would simply declare in each ward the number of votes for each candidates and then when all wards are in declare a list of the duly elected candidates. I realise this is not perfect,and there may be a better way of doing it. Defections, by elections and countermanded polls would all screw with the numbers. But I don't think councils with no or only a handful of opposition councillors represent any real sense of democracy. An alternative I suppose might be at large top up seats on a list system similar to the London Assembly. You would at least guarantee some opposition that way. |
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Post by mrpastelito on Oct 9, 2016 21:27:32 GMT
Expand all the cities (over 250,000) to include the whole urban area, and make them unitaries. What's left can be unitaries too, although I don't feel strongly about for example North Yorkshire or Norfolk, where a 2 tier system makes some sense. That's what was planned in Devon, with Exeter joining Plymouth and Torbay as unitaries. That would have left the entire rest of Devon lumped together in a fourth unitary without anything remotely resembling a centre - a recipe for disaster imo. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Oct 9, 2016 22:05:18 GMT
So, at 11:33pm at Little Wallop Primary School the returning office declares Fred (Party A), Jim (Party A) and Hazel (Party B) elected. Then at 11:42pm somebody comes running in, panting, and says: woah! Midquiquitte has just elected two Party A members with more votes than here, taking them over 40 in total, you've got to invalidate the declaration you've just made. All these quota-type schemes all suffer from the flaw of telling the voters: sorry, you weren't actually allowed to vote the way you did; or telling candidates: sorry, you're not allowed to stand because of what's in your head/in your trousers/whatever. The logistics of it would probably be that the returning officer would simply declare in each ward the number of votes for each candidates and then when all wards are in declare a list of the duly elected candidates. I realise this is not perfect,and there may be a better way of doing it. Defections, by elections and countermanded polls would all screw with the numbers. But I don't think councils with no or only a handful of opposition councillors represent any real sense of democracy. An alternative I suppose might be at large top up seats on a list system similar to the London Assembly. You would at least guarantee some opposition that way. In other words PR in some form solves the problem without having to circumvent the will of the voters. There are very few places where a party could win two thirds or more of the seats in a proportional system so it becomes a non-problem. If a super-majority is elected in those circumstances it's because a super-majority of local voters voted for it. If it results in bad governance then the answer is for those voters to change their vote next time. If they don't they get the bad governance they deserve |
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Foggy
Non-Aligned
Yn Ennill Yma
Posts: 6,144
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Post by Foggy on Oct 9, 2016 23:33:43 GMT
You don't need PR or STV to stop a party winning over two thirds of the seats on a council, but it's worth noting that the electoral law in Bavaria allows the winner of a FPTP seat to be 'un-elected' if their party gets less than 5% of the Gesamtstimmen (although I don't think this has ever happened in practice). Nextdoor in BaWü, losing candidates with the highest percentage share of the vote in their constituencies are used to fill top-up seats, potentially being elected ahead of someone from another party who got more personal votes than they did.
I wouldn't recommend either of those systems, however. A 'limited vote' method could be more appropriate. It could be like the mainland directly-elected seats in the Spanish Senate except with 3 members elected in each constituency rather than 4. As people have already pointed out, this could be open to circumvention by endorsed 'independent' candidates from the dominant party. I think you just have to accept that if a party gets over 70% of the vote, the system shouldn't limit it to 67% of the council seats.
Anyway, to answer the main question in the thread...
I don't think you can put the genie back in the bottle with regard to Greater London. Its boundaries probably need expanding. There could then be with 15-20 larger boroughs with parished areas permitted below them.
The GLA blurs the line between devolution and local government, but its boundaries are set by the LGBCE, so I'll inlcude it here. I'd go back to a 'Council Leader' model (the mayors of Paris, Berlin, Madrid and Vienna aren't directly elected, and nor was that of Rome at the time the GLA Act was going through Parliament, so I don't see why London's has to be) with an expanded, properly thought-out Assembly.
Elsewhere I'd favour a two-tier solution, without exception, but with very different borders and names in many areas from the 1970s attempt at uniformity. I broadly agree with the idea of expanding the boundaries of lots of large cities, but with the opposite treatment meted out to unviably large Birmingham. Teesdale had the opposite problem at would certainly not return, whilst the current West Somerset had been bankrupt for well over a decade and cannot possibly carry on as it is.
The top-tier councils should actually have the possibility of a perceptible change in policy priorities and direction for the local residents depending on which parties are in charge, which needs to go hand in hand with greater responsibility for their own funding. The lower ones would still mainly have statutory responsibilities and basically parties would still be competing to see who carries them out most efficiently.
It would be a requirement for the meaningful levels of local government to be chosen by AMS, but parish and community councils (which would continue to be essentially powerless, but compulsory outside major urban areas) could choose between that, multi-member FPTP and STV.
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Oct 9, 2016 23:46:35 GMT
The easiest way to guarantee that no party ever gets more than 75% of a council is to say that, in the event that they do, sufficient numbers of the defeated candidates who had the highest proportion of the vote are co-opted as councillors representing the whole authority until the next election.
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Post by gwynthegriff on Oct 10, 2016 11:07:15 GMT
I am not a fan of the unitary authority model. It makes a lot of sense to run strategic services like highways at a county level while maintaining local control on things like planning decisions more locally. I suppose that doesn't necessarily mean maintaining district councils, you could establish directly elected planning boards, but the two-tier model does provide a convenient way of keeping local services local while still allowing strategic decision making for a larger area in some areas. My suggested reforms? No unitary authorities except for large cities and islands. Especially no whole county or geographically large unitaries. No combined authorities. Cap of no more than two thirds of the seats on any council being held by any one party - one party states are always badly run. Local citizen initiated referenda. No more elected mayors unless following a referendum requested on petition. Having experienced the move from a well-run two-tier Cheshire to the shambles which is Cheshire East ... I agree with pretty well all of the above. |
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Post by Lord Twaddleford on Oct 10, 2016 11:14:21 GMT
I am not a fan of the unitary authority model. It makes a lot of sense to run strategic services like highways at a county level while maintaining local control on things like planning decisions more locally. I suppose that doesn't necessarily mean maintaining district councils, you could establish directly elected planning boards, but the two-tier model does provide a convenient way of keeping local services local while still allowing strategic decision making for a larger area in some areas. My suggested reforms? No unitary authorities except for large cities and islands. Especially no whole county or geographically large unitaries. No combined authorities. Cap of no more than two thirds of the seats on any council being held by any one party - one party states are always badly run. Local citizen initiated referenda. No more elected mayors unless following a referendum requested on petition. Having experienced the move from a well-run two-tier Cheshire to the shambles which is Cheshire East ... I agree with pretty well all of the above. Why did Cheshire switch to being a bunch of unitaries? From looking at the place it seems to me that this would be one of the places where the county-district system would be ideal. |
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Post by gwynthegriff on Oct 10, 2016 11:31:02 GMT
Having experienced the move from a well-run two-tier Cheshire to the shambles which is Cheshire East ... I agree with pretty well all of the above. Why did Cheshire switch to being a bunch of unitaries? From looking at the place it seems to me that this would be one of the places where the county-district system would be ideal. Because Hazel Blears said so. It certainly wasn't a popular idea in Cheshire. |
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Oct 10, 2016 17:25:09 GMT
We always begin by discussing the boundaries, which in practice is the last thing you want to sort. You need to decide what you want local government to do and that determines the size of the local government units. Do you want it to have responsibility for social care? If that's the case, you need bigger units than at present. Economic planning? City-regions are the way to go. Strip its responsibilities down to emptying the bins? You could go smaller than districts if you wanted.
Personally, I see no particular advantage to two-tier local government and the considerable difficulty that the electorate still don't understand it even after decades of its existence. I'd like reasonably large unitaries based on TTWAs or combinations thereof and some degree of regional government, not necessarily directly elected. However, to assuage local feeling I'd favour putting area committees on a statutory footing and assigning them some subsidiary powers. Potentially these could be fairly small, covering more or less the same areas as old UDCs and RDCs.
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