Waste shake-up as nine councils to become unitary

The Department for Communities and Local Government announced on Tuesday that Wiltshire, Shropshire, Northumberland, Durham and Cornwall county councils would all become unitary authorities within two years.

And, proposals by Exeter city, Ipswich and Bedford borough councils alongside a proposal by Chester city council to split Cheshire into two unitary areas have also been approved for the new status, provided they submit further evidence that their proposals are “financially viable.”

The decisions mean that in these “two tier” county areas, the district and county councils – with separate management of collection and disposal services – will now become single organisations running all waste services.

The government believes making these authorities unitary will make services easier to manage and save money.

However, some district councils fear the changes could involve job losses for collection crews and recycling officers, with some even preparing to challenge the government's decision through a judicial review this September.

Announcing the authorities which were chosen this week, local government minister John Healey said: “All of the nine councils have shown they want to build on the improvements we have seen in local government services over the past 10 years – further improving the services they offer to their communities by making them more responsive, effective and efficient.”

He added: “It will now be for these unitary authorities to ensure they deliver these plans – empowering local people and communities, further improving local services, realising greater efficiencies and delivering improved economic prosperity in their areas.”

Durham

In Durham, waste section manager John Shannon told letsrecycle.com that the county council welcomed the decision that it had been chosen for unitary status. He suggested that being a unitary authority could resolve many logistical waste management problems associated with two-tier authorities by bringing all services “under one roof”.

In particular, he said that the decision was likely to create economies of scale in Durham, where some districts are very rural and incurred higher collection costs while other areas are urban, by balancing out costs and because operations would no longer be restricted by district boundaries.

He suggested that the district authorities might be replaced with 14 “satellite areas” which would provide local points of reference for services including recycling and suggested that the council would let a county-wide collection contract.

He said: “This will make procurement easier with one brain rather than two.”

However, Durham's waste section manager explained that waste and recycling services were likely to remain as they were for the foreseeable future in Durham and that the government's decision was still not final.

“It is not over yet. The government have indicated that it is still to go to judicial review in September,” he explained.

Northumberland

In Northumberland, head of waste management Paul Jones said that the area already had a “degree of uniformity” over waste due to a joint waste strategy with the districts.

But he explained that the key benefits of unitary status would come when the council was awarding a long-term PFI contract.

He said: “It will benefit Northumberland by taking out some of the risks with PFI in terms of delivery of waste and other factors.”

Mr Jones said that he did not expect unitary status to have any job implications for collection crews and waste and recycling staff, but admitted that, with both the county and district councils to be dissolved, workers were worried. He also commented that the district council were not as happy about becoming a unitary authority as the county council was.

He said: “I don't foresee any job implications but all the local authorities are effectively dissolved so there are clearly uncertainties people are having.”

“The county council has welcomed the decision but the local authorities were supporting a two-tier structure,” he added.

Shropshire

In Shropshire, the council suggested there could be some changes with regards to jobs in waste and recycling  by stating “The One Council for Shropshire business case identified 182 council posts which will be removed under a unitary council.”

However, the council said that “This does not mean 182 people losing their jobs. This is a very small fraction of the total council workforce, and the process will be carefully managed over the coming period so that it will have a minimal impact on staff.”

The decision to grant Shropshire unitary status is also facing a judicial review from Shrewsbury and Atcham borough council, who have historically refused to work with the rest of Shropshire over waste management (see letsrecycle.com story) .

But Geraint Morgan, deputy chief executive of Shrewsbury and Athcam borough council, denied that the legal challenge was related to Shrewsbury's desire to run its own waste and recycling services and that he did not expect that unitary status would not change its waste services very much.

He said: “We are currently progressing with alternate weekly collections of waste and recycling and whilst we are not at the moment a part of the Shropshire waste partnership we are moving parallel to it. If we began working under the same system I also suspect that the contract would also allow for us to transfer workers from out in-house collection service to the new contractor.”

Decisions

Final decisions on all proposals will be taken once the Local Government and Public Involvement in health (LGPIH) bill is enacted.

To ensure smooth implementation, the DCLG has established a group of experts including the Local Government Association, local government trade unions and employers and other professional bodies to advise on the practical arrangements.

John Healey added that the government would also help those authorities whose proposals were not chosen for unitary status – including Bedfordshire, Cheshire, North Yorkshire and Somerset county councils and Northumberland districts and Cumbria council – to promote prosperity and improve service delivery.

Meanwhile, although he said that Norwich city council's proposals based on the city's current boundaries did not meet the strict criteria, he said there was a “strong case” for a unitary authority if these were revised.

He said: “The five pathfinder areas will pioneer new ways of working to demonstrate for all councils in the remaining two-tier areas how better services and greater efficiency gains can be achieved.”