Exclusive: London's councils want a "radical" change that could curtail the mayor's power — by following the lead of Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester.
I'm afraid this is a dreadful idea - surely a recipe for huge delay and protracted battles over even the smallest decisions. London is already an outlier compared to other mega cities (as you point out) in terms of restricted executive power. See the example of Oxford St pedestrianisation where the presence of one or two marginal wards in a tight council end up forcing delay to progressive urban upgrade - imagine if every council has a veto power. We would have never had ULEZ and I'd still be slowly contracting lung cancer (even faster) on my cycle to work..!
A better idea IMO would be to scrap the boroughs altogether in favour of an enlarged GLA that can take on local planning, bins and potholes. Stripping out the layers of local bureaucrats and fiefdoms would be a great opportunity to save some of our council tax and get more done for less. Lambeth is one of the most notorious for high council tax and low competence - see the recent "homes for Lambeth" saga for evidence.
This would be a disaster. Decision-making would get bogged down in horse-trading and refusal to think ahead. As an example, despite fewer than 50% of Kensington and Chelsea residents owning cars, K&C council refuse to work with TfL and the Assembly making the borough a safer place for active travel.
How would giving the Boroughs a veto over what the Mayor does improve the Met? That the big debate in London devolution isn't trying to secure extra powers and funding but the Boroughs squabbling with the Mayor and trying to muscle their way into City Hall is proof that this model won't work.
Difficult to avoid the conclusion that this behaviour has been encouraged by the Government's approach to devolution - prioritizing 'widening' mayors out to Shires and ruling out any fiscal devolution (even tourist taxes!) has obviously fuelled mischiefmaking
Spare a thought for the elected london assembly members who don't even get a name check here. Isn't the entire point of their being elected to fulfil this function?
The proposal would see the London Assembly continue to exist with its scrutiny function. The idea is that the councils would be cut in on executive decision making.
So the people who won't allow any new housing, won't allow any new bars, won't even allow any new mobile phone masts, now think they should have a veto over everything else as well.
Surely these proposals just gum up decision-making even more? Personally I'd far rather they focussed on accelerating decision-making.
I'd humbly suggest that a more relevant question might be whether having the city run by 32 separate boroughs is really the most effective way to get anything done. Cross-borough coordination even on basic stuff (like e-bike parking rules) is painful and slow. I suspect it's probably not the most efficient to have 32 boroughs each individually running its own processes / services / contracting.
As everyone is saying here this would be a terrible idea. London's government and governance is a mess because of the 33 local authorities and the fact that they already have significant powers and responsibilities, more so than the mayor.
If designing a c. 10m population city from scratch, nobody in their right mind would consider diving its primary local government responsibilities into 33 areas, with a mostly tokenistic strategic leader.
London councils (the 33) and London Councils (the org) need to grow up - if they each had their own way, there would be even less strategic direction, more short term thinking, funding used to solve very local issues rather than looking at wider-issues.
Sounds like a prescription for NIMBYism triumphant and complete paralysis. On the contrary, we need to make accountability match power and transfer more authority to the Mayor. London is one city, not a collection of boroughs and shires.
This proposal would freeze out the Greens, who have achieved third place in every London Assembly election since 2016 - yet you don’t consider this and don’t talk to any Greens for a response.
Agree with all the below that this could not be a worse idea. Excessively local/parochial decision making is a key reason for so many London problems. I sincerely hope the government doesn't listen and goes the opposite way.
This is a frankly, terrible idea which will lead to complete paralysis of anything in London, sort of upset and annoyed that you'd even run this. Councils, if anything, should be abolished and London should be one authority under the assembly for representation and mayor.
Councils are mires of local corruption, incompetence and petty politics, and constantly hold back and block positive developments, you've even reported on some of it, here and everywhere else in the country. Would appreciate if this substack wasn't a mouthpiece for them.
There may be a need for councils to have more of a voice, I can't help but feel that this is a terrible idea as proposed. We already have problems enough with the idiots in Tower Hamlets scrapping schemes in their own borough, do we really want them being able to veto any improvements to the rest of the city?
I'm afraid this is a dreadful idea - surely a recipe for huge delay and protracted battles over even the smallest decisions. London is already an outlier compared to other mega cities (as you point out) in terms of restricted executive power. See the example of Oxford St pedestrianisation where the presence of one or two marginal wards in a tight council end up forcing delay to progressive urban upgrade - imagine if every council has a veto power. We would have never had ULEZ and I'd still be slowly contracting lung cancer (even faster) on my cycle to work..!
Agreed.
A better idea IMO would be to scrap the boroughs altogether in favour of an enlarged GLA that can take on local planning, bins and potholes. Stripping out the layers of local bureaucrats and fiefdoms would be a great opportunity to save some of our council tax and get more done for less. Lambeth is one of the most notorious for high council tax and low competence - see the recent "homes for Lambeth" saga for evidence.
So London Councils want to return to pork barrel politics and scrap ULEZ (an example of “better” decision making in Manchester)?
Have these people not seen the ULEZ data and public opinions? They were wrong and he was right
They don't care about that. There's a culture war to be won.
We need more proportional representation not less.
This would be a disaster. Decision-making would get bogged down in horse-trading and refusal to think ahead. As an example, despite fewer than 50% of Kensington and Chelsea residents owning cars, K&C council refuse to work with TfL and the Assembly making the borough a safer place for active travel.
How would giving the Boroughs a veto over what the Mayor does improve the Met? That the big debate in London devolution isn't trying to secure extra powers and funding but the Boroughs squabbling with the Mayor and trying to muscle their way into City Hall is proof that this model won't work.
Difficult to avoid the conclusion that this behaviour has been encouraged by the Government's approach to devolution - prioritizing 'widening' mayors out to Shires and ruling out any fiscal devolution (even tourist taxes!) has obviously fuelled mischiefmaking
Awful idea from the councils, who should instead focus on getting the Mayor more powers from Westminster.
We should probably merge or abolish the councils instead
Spare a thought for the elected london assembly members who don't even get a name check here. Isn't the entire point of their being elected to fulfil this function?
The proposal would see the London Assembly continue to exist with its scrutiny function. The idea is that the councils would be cut in on executive decision making.
Woe unto the AMs then I suppose. Another humiliating pass-over while someone else gets to control the levers
And yet they are the only politicians elected in proportion to the number of votes they actually receive.
Sounds like it would just be adding another layer of bureaucracy.
So the people who won't allow any new housing, won't allow any new bars, won't even allow any new mobile phone masts, now think they should have a veto over everything else as well.
Surely these proposals just gum up decision-making even more? Personally I'd far rather they focussed on accelerating decision-making.
I'd humbly suggest that a more relevant question might be whether having the city run by 32 separate boroughs is really the most effective way to get anything done. Cross-borough coordination even on basic stuff (like e-bike parking rules) is painful and slow. I suspect it's probably not the most efficient to have 32 boroughs each individually running its own processes / services / contracting.
As everyone is saying here this would be a terrible idea. London's government and governance is a mess because of the 33 local authorities and the fact that they already have significant powers and responsibilities, more so than the mayor.
If designing a c. 10m population city from scratch, nobody in their right mind would consider diving its primary local government responsibilities into 33 areas, with a mostly tokenistic strategic leader.
London councils (the 33) and London Councils (the org) need to grow up - if they each had their own way, there would be even less strategic direction, more short term thinking, funding used to solve very local issues rather than looking at wider-issues.
Sounds like a prescription for NIMBYism triumphant and complete paralysis. On the contrary, we need to make accountability match power and transfer more authority to the Mayor. London is one city, not a collection of boroughs and shires.
This proposal would freeze out the Greens, who have achieved third place in every London Assembly election since 2016 - yet you don’t consider this and don’t talk to any Greens for a response.
Beef up the directly elected Assembly, as has been called for in countless reviews. This just seems like council leader jealousy...
Absolutely - let's look at those reviews again first before this plan.
Although I do not Labour councillors have been talking about this for a while amongst themselves. So I guess it is more of a risk than I'd like
anyone holding manchester up as a shining example needs sacking.
Agree with all the below that this could not be a worse idea. Excessively local/parochial decision making is a key reason for so many London problems. I sincerely hope the government doesn't listen and goes the opposite way.
This is a frankly, terrible idea which will lead to complete paralysis of anything in London, sort of upset and annoyed that you'd even run this. Councils, if anything, should be abolished and London should be one authority under the assembly for representation and mayor.
Councils are mires of local corruption, incompetence and petty politics, and constantly hold back and block positive developments, you've even reported on some of it, here and everywhere else in the country. Would appreciate if this substack wasn't a mouthpiece for them.
There may be a need for councils to have more of a voice, I can't help but feel that this is a terrible idea as proposed. We already have problems enough with the idiots in Tower Hamlets scrapping schemes in their own borough, do we really want them being able to veto any improvements to the rest of the city?