North Yorkshire Council has proved the naysayers wrong two years since its formation - Carl Les

Introduced by a Conservative government with aspiration and expectations, high hopes even, the disaster that didn`t happen has now encouraged a Labour government to pursue the process with vigour. Suffice to say for all the arguments we change-makers put forward at the time – less confusion, more joined up working, more efficiency, less cost.

And as the nation moves towards a new world order of conflicts, hot as well as cold, trade and tariff, with an overhanging concern about recession even, certainly less growth, but with necessary extra spending on defence, so it will be the less cost argument that drives this forward.

Shortly we will see the outcome of the government’s spending review and I think we all expect it to be bad news for local government. There is only so much in the pot and the priority at the moment is defence, and rightly so. Any savings will be essential.

And we do anticipate bad news for rural areas if the bias is towards deprivation. Our deprivation, and we do have pockets of it, together with an overall blanket of low wage, low productivity economies, is less visible than in high population areas, often hidden by the appearance of affluence, so we will always lose out in that debate. I have said on numerous occasions, rurality and deprivation should not be weighed against each other and I will keep on repeating this. They are part of the same spectrum.

That’s why I’m really pleased that the Mayor of York & North Yorkshire, David Skaith, has accepted my invitation at the start of his tenure to visit our Area Committees on a regular basis. He has won the election for the principal role of boosting economic activity in the region, with a focus on inward investment, including government funding, skills, transport and housing. It is good that he is coming to talk to, and to listen to, the other election winners i.e. the councillors in their local areas.

We knew one of the challenges to local government reorganisation (LGR) was size. Even though the County Council had been delivering 90 per cent (by value) of the services in the previous two-tier system, the perception that it was “too big” was promoted by those who did not want change. Putting my retail and hotelier hat on, I couldn’t see the argument that Tesco would be a better retailer if it only had seven shops, or Premier Inn had too many properties in North Yorkshire to be successful.

We cannot deny size has an effect, nor did we. Our county is the largest in England, 5,000 square miles. You can fit Greater London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Essex inside our boundaries, but with a lot less population, so a lot fewer problems than those sizes. Structures must take account of it. Good management must be deployed to meet all challenges and we are well-served in North Yorkshire that we employ good management.

One of the structural mitigations we have to the “too big” argument is our Area Committees. Every place and resident has an elected Member, so there’s no change in principle there, only quantum, another cost saving.

One thing that binds all elected Members, whatever our roles or special responsibilities, is that we must attend both the main Council meetings and area-based committees. Very similar in size to the former district and borough councils, but now equal numbers, we started them based on the six Parliamentary constituencies.

As these boundaries have changed, so we now have six and a half constituencies, we have left our AC boundaries the same until our divisional (ward) boundaries are settled ahead of our next election in two years time. It will likely be the next Council that will decide what will fit into the AC’s at the margins. The core area will likely remain the same. Each AC has also been accompanied by a development control (planning) committee, again populated by Members elected to that local area.

Although slightly decoupled from Parliamentary boundaries, AC’s are regularly attended by our MPs, sometimes in person but often online and this has proved a very useful interface between Members and MPs. Government works best when national and local talk with each other, and understand each other’s issues. The new dynamic mentioned earlier is that the Mayor is also involved in dialogue.

We set out to be the most local of large councils. Our Area Committees are but one part; they offer that focus on what and how the Council is delivering locally, and are meetings in public in our civic centres.

Carl Les is the Leader of North Yorkshire Council.