On Friday 21 April the ADSO London Branch held its Annual Seminar at the offices of London Councils in Southwark. The event was well attended with around 60 delegates, speakers, sponsors and Committee Members present. The day was very successful with a lot of thoughtful contributions from all parties.
The day began with an excellent presentation by Professor Colin Copus (De Montfort University) on the work and interim findings of the Councillor Commission.
He spoke about the research they had undertaken on the pressures on modern Councillors including:
- The expectation that they can be reached 24 hours a day.
- How to balance a regular job with being a Councillor.
- The challenge of ‘responsibility without power’ in the UK’s centralised political environment.
Professor Copus was followed by Carl Whistlecraft Head of Governance at Kirklees Council on their Democracy Commission. His council had undertaken a lot of work investigating what (over 1000!) local people thought democracy should look like in Kirklees. Key themes they had looked at included the networked society, regional devolution, the role of Councillors and more. In particular they considered that having active citizens was the key to building a vibrant local democracy.
Both Commissions are due to present the final reports shortly and I would recommend everyone read the reports when they become available.
Both presenters were then joined by Ed Hammond, Centre for Public Scrutiny, and Dave Burn Vice-Chair, ADSO Board, for a discussion on the future of local democracy and the impact and opportunities for Democratic Services.
The next part of the day was given over to a discussion on the role of Overview and Scrutiny at Councils. This was led by Craig Bowdery who is Clerk to the CLG Parliamentary Select Committee investigation the role of O&S in local government. Attendees were set a number of questions to discuss and to feedback on which led to some interesting discussions.
For example, the group I was in tended to the view that there was probably no benefit in making wide ranging changes to the O&S regulations but that there would be a great benefit in having national guidance on what constituted good Overview and Scrutiny as it was often difficult for backbench Councillors to demand the support they needed to perform good scrutiny.
The Branch will be looking to collate all feedback as a response to the Inquiry.
The afternoon session focussed on the different models of local governance and the advantages/disadvantages of each.
The main speaker for this session was Councillor Tony Arbour, Chairman of the Greater London Assembly and former Leader of the London Borough of Richmond Upon Thames. He brought 50 years’ experience to the discussion and had served under all three systems. Cllr Arbour was a very interesting speaker and gave us a number of insights that potentially challenged views held on issues, such as:
- Councillors used to work harder under the Committee system than they do now as there were more meetings to attend.
- Allowances for Councillors are not necessarily a good thing and, for example, make it much harder to move Councillors out of the Cabinet if they have become dependent on the money.
- He had been in opposition when the switch to the Executive Model had been introduced. He later became Leader of the Council but did not want to change back to the Committee system as he was Leader then!
- The problem with Scrutiny is that so many Members don’t understand it and there are no powers to summon people to attend.
For the last part of the discussion Cllr Arbour was joined by Ben Johnson, Policy Advisor to the Mayor of London and former Councillor who also gave his thoughts. In particular they both discussed the difficulty of getting young people to stand for election. They agreed it was key to show them that they could make a difference.
The final sessions allowed attendees to choose between exploring professional development for Democratic Services Officers with Sue Keogh or continuing the theme from Part Three with a discussion led by Alexa Coates from the London Borough of Sutton on what it was like to work in the Committee System. A lot more Committee meetings was one of the main point I took from that session!
I would strongly encourage ADSO members to consider attending one of these events, everyone I spoke to seemed to get a lot out of it and it was a privilege to Chair the day. To read a bit more detail I would recommend searching for ‘#ADSOLon17’ on Twitter to read the comments posted through the day.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Branch Committee, and in particular Henry Langford from Lambeth for organising the event and London Councils for hosting. Finally I would also like to thank our excellent sponsors Modern.gov and Granicus without whom holding these events would be so much more difficult.
Matthew Mannion, Chair, ADSO London Branch