This has been talked about for years and it finally looks like it is happening, with Cardiff set to be re-united with the Vale of Glamorgan, harking back to the ol' South Glamorgan days.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-25796349
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-25776603
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/number-welsh-councils-could-fall-6528725

Apart from cutting some bureaucracy in Wales, what other effects will this have? Will Cardiff lean slightly towards the right being integrated with the more prosperous Vale?

Penarth, Dinas Powys and, at a push, Barry are already de facto parts of Cardiff so it makes sense to have the eastern part of the Vale linked politically with Cardiff, however it would make more sense for the western part (Llantwit Major & Cowbridge) to be linked with Bridgend. Being a Bridgend boy, it does seem daft that it could be ruled from Swansea as it had always looked east towards Cardiff and rarely west to the Jacks.

The proposed boundaries are drawn with an eye to EU funding rules. It's pretty simple. The current Bridgend CBC is within the convergence fund area the VOG isn't.

There are risks with any re-organisation:

Less democratic scrutiny and engagement, added to the lack of media coverage. See Oggy Bloggy for the local TV that is not at all local (apart from the Swansea bids). The number of councillors will be hugely reduced which will have a knock-on affect on talent (or lack of in some peoples eyes) available to the Senedd. We will end with an even smaller, tiny even, cliche of professional politicians.

Especially for councils such as Cardiff, Merthyr or Wrexham which to date have been able to concentrate effort on the only main settlement, whether by attracting public or private investment, the future risk is that such effort with limited resources available will in future be split. Cardiff is unlikely to suffer much but Barry will feel ignored and Wrexham and Merthyr will likely see greatly reduced economic activity and investment. Council headquarters will likely be removed, investments will continue to be made but more likely in compromise locations, see Clwyd CC and the establishment of Theatre Clwyd in Mold for a previous eras example.

Cost will be a major implication and savings will I suggest be less than envisaged and take longer to payback. A lot of effort and lack of productivity will come from merging organisation and re-deploying of assets.

That is not to say that there is no merit in the report, realigning boundaries, merging Powys with the Health Board. But before we embark on wholesale change everywhere why not try out the merger with the smallest authorities, Anglesey/Gwynedd, Merthyr/Rhondda Cynon Taff and Blaenau Gwent/Torfaen. If it works extend if not rethink.

If the Ambulance board is all Wales then there seems to be no reason that Fire is not also all Wales and the Police also, although not a Welsh responsibility.

it is a good thing. it is ludicrous that Wales has 22 local authorities. Birmingham with 1m people has 1 whereas Wales has 22 for 3m people. That is creating a state for the sake of it and not out of need. lets say bye bye to 22 CEO's, 22 Finance departments, 22 HR departments and so on.

I'm surprised it took the Welsh government so long. This should have been the first thing they did in 1999 when they came to power. The Tories made Wales top heavy in public sector bureaucracy.

How many LAs does Wales need? If we are as capable as the Brummies then we only need 3: North Wales, Mid Wales, South Wales. That seems about right

It'll be interesting to see what happens on this.

It would be natural for Cardiff to just team up with VoG and leave it at that if it's done on a voluntary basis, but with one eye on the city regions that have already been set-up why not just use those boundaries for the new councils plus bring back some of the historic council names for West, Mid and North Wales and leave it as 5 councils. So if I had my way it would be as follows :

South East Wales
Swansea Bay
Dyfed
Powys
Gwynedd
Clwyd

I don't have much of a problem with Jantra's idea either but I think that the authorities have already outlined two south Wales local authorities with the city regions having been kicked off.

As a Bridgend boy I wouldn't like to see Bridgend team up with Swansea and Neath Port-Talbot if it's at the same time part of the South East Wales City Region as it currently is.

I don't think it's about being capable. Politically Wales is far more diverse by area than Birmingham is.

Also, forgive me if I'm wrong as I'm not that up to speed with this, but when Gwent County Council existed, you still had Newport Borough Council, Monmouthshire Borough Council etc and weren't these Borough Councils essentially just given more powers when Gwent was abolished?

If we went back to 12 local authorities, wouldn't we still have 22(ish) smaller councils that came underneath the 12, thus adding red tape rather than removing it?

I just don't believe the bit in bold. Birmingham has much greater wealth disparity than Wales, its social problems are far greater than ours.

I was talking about politics, which doesn't have to be all about wealth and social problems. For instance can you really see Monmouth & Cardiff under the same local authority?

Also what about the rest of my post? Could it lead to another layer of management? Not really voicing an opinion so much as posing a question.

ok fair enough I misunderstood your comment. why shouldn't monmouth and Cardiff be covered by the same LA? we manage it when dealing with ambulances, MEPs and so on. we are in the 21st century - the communication age - people from different continents play mario kart with each other. if individuals can manage that then surely the state can ensure connectivity between Cardiff and monmouth.


again you raise a valid point although I think an aim of the reorganisation is to remove the top heavy bureaucracy and replace with a much more streamlined management structure

This factoid is trotted out quite regularly when people discuss local government, but Birmingham is actually the largest local authority in the whole of Europe. It's also widely regarded as too big and hugely dysfunctional.

Which at the other end of the scale is possibly a bit too large, for an urban area. It's become a bit of a cumbersome, incompetent beast. Increasing the size of local authorities doesn't automatically lead to a better performing or smaller sized public sector.

Agree that the number of councils of in Wales is excessive though, although some of the mergers seem a bit 'off'.

Swansea Bay sounds more like a holiday destination than a local council. It's also going to sound really weird if you live in Onllwyn, Gwaun Cae Gurwen or Blaengarw.

What's wrong with West Glamorgan?

A fact is still a fact even if you don't like it.

It's not a fair comparison. You are using an outlier as the basis of your argument.

It's just basically dishonest.

More or less the same restructuring I believe should happen. No doubt the public sector is bloated in Wales but the mergers should make geographical sense. No point Bridgend being ruled from Swansea if it's part of the Capital City Region. IMO 10-12 is still a few too many, but 3 is too few, give us 7 as a maximum:

* Gwent
* Cardiff & South Wales (Old Mid and South Glam LA's)
* Swansea Bay (Old West Glam)
* Dyfed (Carms, Pembs and Cardiganshire)
* Powys
* Clywd
* Gwynedd

The mergers shouldn't stop at Local Authorities either as mentioned above. There should be 1 police force instead of 4 (Scotland only has 1 force after the merger of 8 forces and the DEA last year) and there should be 1 fire service instead of 3 (Scotland only has 1 fire & rescue service after the merger of 8 services last year) as an example.

I wouldn't stop there either, there are too many Universities in Wales, I'd like to see University of Trinity Saint David merged into Swansea and Cardiff Met bite the bullet and combine forces with USW. We are a small nation but there are too many public bodies for our size.

Monmouthshire is a very conservative area, both politically and socially. There is also a very large farming community within the county. I'm not sure if those people would feel fairly represented by somewhere like Cardiff County Hall, not without extra resources which these changes are trying to cut back on.

When I was in school the kids from Bridgend county were quite scummy so being ruled from Swansea should suit them.

it is far from dishonest. I made no representation about whether it was the right number for Birmingham or not. I just stated what is factually correct.

The arguments in favour of local authorities with common borders with LHBs, police and fire services are clearly set out in the Williams Commission report, which no-one here seems to have read except me.

The argument that councils which qualify for EU Objective One can't merge with ones that don't is a bit tragic, but undeniable from a purely pragmatic point of view.

Are they completely f*ing forgetting that they are trying to create a city region!? At least Cardiff, Barry, Penarth, Dinas Powys, Caerphilly and Newport should all come under the same counil - they are practially joined together.

All coming under the same council would be pushing it to say the least and Caerphilly and Newport are both quite distinct from Cardiff also.

What's this city region thing?

This reorganisation doesn't affect the city region project one way or another.

Whilst appreciating the need to save costs and cut down on some duplication. My gut feeling on this is that this reorganisation will create regional or sub regional councils not local ones. My other gut feeling, which is contrary to other views here is that there are too few local councils. Identity is important and these proposals will cut off people from councils and councillors. I acknowledge that there is a case for the merging of some functions such as HR, IT and the like, but where a function is better delivered at the most local level, it should be. I have a major dislike of empire building.

I haven't read it either.

Absolutely right Des.

Jantra's point regarding 22 HRA, Planning and Education heads of department is also correct in that small councils inccur additional costs and as the report notes there is a lack of experience or knowledge in many areas. So how do you merge those two opposing viewpoints.

I am not entirely convinced that bigger or ever bigger (in Jantras view) councils will necessarily have the desired affect. Even the money saving aspect is not exactly tied down as a certainty. Large councils in the past were not that popular, there was no large upwelling of support when they were consigned to the temporary dustbin of history.

The biggest problems are with social services, education and complex planning decisions. It should not be beyond the wit of man, or legislators, to share such services on a basis such as the health authority boundaries but keeping the local input into decisions.

no but having the city region as the LA would make things whole lot easier. we all know that politicians are more concerned with their own little fiefdoms rather than working together for the greater good. Wales already has a track record of falling further behind other third world nations like Chad and Southern Sudan and that is down to the inability of our politicians to be able to make quick decisions.

this may be possible elsewhere but it isn't possible in Wales. Wales' politicians are self serving only interested in their own little empires. There is little appetite to work for the greater good - can you seriously imagine one council relinquishing control of its admin functions to another council? I imagine most of taxpayers money that year would be spent on barristers petitioning the high court.

The question is 'Would there be any cash left after potentially having bumped up the payroll for the grandees leading the enlarged local authorities?'

Remember that any extra responsibilities would inevitably mean extra costs for our Welsh Labour working class councillors.


http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/four-jobs-100000-wales-highest-2031864

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/caerphilly-council-pay-scandal-amounts-6146894


etc. etc.

Hear hear. Only in Wales do politicians build empires. Only in Wales is local government resistant to re-organisation.

Let us look a Manchester. Here we have ten local authorities, with a mean population of 250,000, each performing all of the functions of local government, as they are all unitary authorities. There is massive duplication of roles and functions and necessarily, enormous extra expense. The Manchester city region has responsiblity for some coordination of some functions and for strategic planning.

The difference between God's own slice of Lancashire and Wales is that Mancunians ARE NOT WELSH! It really is that simple. As Jantra says, the Welsh are genetically/biologically incapable of organising anything at all. The whole country should be put in 'special measures' and run from a successful northern English city.

I believe that some rogue strand of DNA has persisted in the Welsh populace which ensures a propensity to embrace socialism and its attendant sloth and corruption. We should look to our neighbours to the east, our very own "master race" and begin a breeding programme that will allow us, using modern gene science, to forever banish the rogue "Welsh-ness" that is plaguing the delivery of our public services.

My plan for a centre-right, business focused party for Wales would have this breeding programme as our number 1 policy. I've thought of a name for it:

U-genics!

Whaddya think, forum friends?

I would have thought the combined salaries of 22 CEOs would be greater than say 8 CEOs, even allowing for an increase in salary.

Except that in the end we'll probably have 22 Assistant CEO on existing salary plus 8 CEO on double the amount

The usual uninformed bile from you I see. Are you even aware that several unitary authorities have already merged their LEAs? No? I thought not.

You ask me a question then answer it for me. How rude.

Just to clarify your point, the politicians have consolidated the education system but not their own little empires.

I would suggest a Greater Cardiff Metropolitan Council with powers to deal with things such as education, transport, planning, in fact the things that need strategic thinking and then the boroughs underneath like Cardiff, VOG, Monmouth and the others could deal with matters that are best dealt at a more local level, like street lighting, parking and other such things. Maybe even splitting Cardiff up into smaller areas. what I'm saying is that that both levels would have the staff and levels of staff appropriate to their responsibilities. For locals, they would still be able to identify with the community in which they live and for the wider world, a Greater Cardiff would have the muscle backed by an increased population that may make in more noticeable. Obviously, this topic has materialised because of a need to save money and get value for money, a good thing in itself, but larger councils by merging existing councils is the wrong way to go as large organisations, be they private or public are less responsive to peoples desires and needs than smaller ones, even through there is economy of scale and councils, more than most activities, need to do this.

If we have a gcmc (not a bad idea) then do we need a city region? Aren't they the same thing? If so why not only one of them rather than both.

The way gmc works is that each constituent council has representatives rather than it being another layer of government. So you get an overarching strategic body without any extra layers of bureaucracy nor do you need any more councillors or workers.

That sort of model, I find very attractive. My main concern, when these sorts of things come around, is the so called democratic short-fall and that, in part, is caused by councillors being far to remote from those who elected them and this, in my view, would be made worse with the introduction of larger councils. Politicians are already viewed with distain, this suggestion to merge councils would only compound that view.

Interesting discussion. I really don't know where I stand on this. It does seem ridiculous for areas as small as Torfaen or Merthyr to be their own authority. But is bigger necessarily better?

Would seem to me, perhaps naively, that Councils should just be made to do better (though that leads to further questions, such as accountability, responsibility and whatnot) and there should be tighter controls and firmer punishment for Councils (including both officers and members) that are reckless, careless, crooked, slow, poor-performing etc. I think I fear the scenario that in another 20 years there'll still be the same old problems and it'll be decided that there are too few LAs which are to distant from their electorate and therefore there needs to be a change back.

Powys is an interesting current example of how things could be. Although it is a unitary authority, the highway functions of the council, along with the allocation of small grants, are delegated to the three Shire Committees. Brecknockshire has 24 councillors, Radnorshire has 15 and Montgomeryshire has 34.

Any mergers could be based on this blueprint with variations in functions devolved, smaller planning decisions, libraries etc but with the admin dealt with centrally.

I'd like to see the town/community councils gain more powers. There are about 750 of them but they're largely moribund at the moment; they have very few powers, a large percentage of the seats are uncontested or vacant and they simply don't exist in many parts of the country, for instance Pontypridd has a town council but Aberdare doesn't.

The Williams Commission proposed a process to create bigger community councils when the Boundary Commission redraws ward boundaries. I think every town in Wales should have a town council responsible for parks, recreation and street lighting.

I agree with much of that. It would be nice to see these councils gain more powers and maybe then the local electorate would be able to see where their taxes are being spent. Although Penarth is in the VOG, it still has a town council and I would like to this gain more powers which may lead to greater scrutiny and more involvement by locals. It could even mean areas of Cardiff getting these.

we really need less state not more. look what happened when Wales finally got its own council. too many chiefs, not enough indians. too many people vying for control, not enough people letting us get on with our lives without hindrance

It's not "more state", it's called democracy.

The Greeks invented it, you know.

I can't say I'm a fan of town and parish/community councils - I've mostly found them (in England and in Wales) to be either irrelevant or very small-minded.

Perhaps in a large LA they have a role to play (parks, recreation, quasi-third sector things like libraries), but generally whenever they're involved in something controversial or political, they are a hindrance. Like planning for example.

But I may be biased

Interesting point about Powys. Planning is sub-divided into the three shires also (well, Development Management is, I can't recall how their strategy/LDP team is divided).

Democracy may be a Greek word, but democracy the Athenians knew is nothing like the democracy we practice. having a vote every 5 years is not democracy. democracy is where the people make each and every decision by themselves and not through some so called peoples representative who the majority did not want.

I didn't know where to put this as I can't seem to find a City Region thread (I thought there was one but must be mistaken).

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/business/business-news/100-rd-jobs-for-bridgend-6603622


There's an interesting use of the South East Wales city region name towards the end of the news article.


'The business is expected to re-locate to larger premises in the Cardiff Capital Region by 2016-17.'

This story is related to new jobs being created in the Bridgend area, and then a mention of a relocation in a couple of years to somewhere within the city region. It's as if the name has been decided. Have I missed an official announcement ?

Someone who thinks the VoG would be better off joined to Bridgend and Neath/Port Talbot rather than Cardiff.

http://penartharbyd.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/coastal-glamorgan/

The Cardiff City Region was launched at the end of September 2013, in the same week that Cardiff's LDP deposit plan with its total lack of regional strategy was lodged.

Thankfully, the completely inaccurate, possibly fraudulent population/household projections have been exposed by the hard work of a couple of good people. The Welsh Governnent is revising its figures and will publish the revisions in February.

Unfortunately, the whole local government/city region reorganisation concept has been compromised by the incompetence (or worse) of the councils, Welsh Government and (Whitehall controlled) England and Wales Planning inspectorate.

Anyone who is interested should check out Jacothenorth's blog for the low-down on this gigantic scam. For the Williams commission to have ignored the boundaries of the extant city region would be laughable if it wweren't so bloody tragic.

I was aware of the launch, my comment was more related to the name of it.

The last thing I remember was that there were a few options, including the Cardiff Capital Region name used in the article.

Has this officially been settled on then ?

I agree with everything you've said though. The total cock-up in the boundaries of the city region being ignored just typifies the whole thing for me. How the hell can they get this wrong ?

@B Lee Ding Obvious

The WG (and ONS for that matter) regularly update and revise projections for both population and for households. Just because an update (I think based on the 2011 census data?) is imminent, doens't mean there were glaring - or fraudulent! - problems with their past projections.

Secondly, the Planning Inspectorate - although there are several reasons to criticise them - are surely nothing to do with either local government organisation or the city region process?

Please take your time to read this blog http://jacothenorth.net/blog from December 2013 onwards. Briefly, the LDP housing need figures were based on 2008 estimates produced by the Knowledge and Analytical Services body (KAS). KAS are responsible for providing household projection data to the Welsh Government. KAS answer to the Department for Communities and Local Government in London and work with another branch of the DCLG, the Planning Inspectorate. At no time between 2008 and 2013 did the WG ask KAS for an updated figure for the number of households predicted in the 2008-2033 period (the statutory LDP period, I think). Even when the 2011 census data showed that the population and household projections from 2008 were way, way out, no-one asked the question "Do we actually need to build this many houses in Wales?".

Thankfully, the question has been put to the petitions commitee and KAS have written to the petitioners to confirm they are looking at the figures again. Carl Sargeant is the minister responsible.

As to your second question, all of these bodies work together and so have a lot to do with each other. Housing and employment needs to be planned nationally, regionally and strategically in Wales. At the minute it is chaotic, fragmented and not serving the interests of the majority of people in Wales. See the Bus Rapid Transport thread. Who will that serve? People who don't live in Wales yet, probably. It will ruin Canton and Fairwater but there's a lot of money to be made building and selling houses on the outskirts of Cardiff

Seems like uncle dingo is providing us with more reasons why welsh labour, the welsh government, the state (delete as appropriate) aren't fit for purpose. For once I agree with him