Three Conservative London councils have announced plans that could see them merge all their services and create the UK's first "super-council". Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, and Westminster say the move could save £50m to £100m a year. Under the merger, each authority would retain its political identity with its own elected leaders and councillors.
Critics argue a wholesale merger would damage the local provision of services and standards would fall. They say fewer staff would be trying to cover a bigger area. Efforts are already under way to merge the three councils' children's services departments, which cover education, but now the authorities are considering whether to go further. The plans will be formally announced later and if they are adopted could create a local authority bigger than Glasgow or Leeds.
A series of working groups will be set up to look at ways of merging three main areas - environmental services, family services and corporate services. The groups are due to be report back by February next year and afterwards more detailed plans will be put out to public consultation. In a joint statement, the leaders of the three councils, Colin Barrow (Westminster), Stephen Greenhalgh (Hammersmith and Fulham) and Sir Merrick Cockell (Kensington and Chelsea) said that potentially sharing every service was a way to "reduce duplication and drive out needless cost".
They insisted the plans would not proceed until there was "a clear democratic, social and economic case to do so". "We want to stress though that local priorities will still be driven by local people and the democratic mandate rested in elected councillors, such as ourselves, will be retained," they said. Our plans may be the first of their kind, but sharing of services in this way can no longer be viewed as a radical concept. It will soon become the norm for local authorities looking for innovative ways to keep costs down while delivering high quality front-line services."
When it was announced earlier this year that work was under way to merge children's services departments - responsible for education, social care and child protection - across the three councils, critics warned that democracy would suffer if schools were not run locally. Paul Dimoldenberg, leader of the Labour group of Westminster city council, said: "There are huge accountability issues with this plan. Parents who want to complain about their child's education will not know who to complain to."
The councils reject accusations that local democracy will suffer under a merger, saying the move would make management savings but not cut back councillors, ensuring accountability to the public was retained.
