Welsh councils retain their influence in partnership with devolved Assembly

A study for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation also concludes that ministers in the Assembly have taken a more positive attitude to local government than their Westminster counterparts and begun to build a working partnership that is an improvement on the equivalent relationship in England.

Researchers at the University of Glamorgan conducted interviews with Assembly ministers, civil servants, council leaders and chief officers and staff at the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA). They also selected six local authorities for a closer, in-depth study of their relationships with the Assembly. They found that:

• Although Assembly Cabinet ministers have been keen to assert their policy leadership, they have recognised the importance of policy and professional support from local government – especially given the constraints on the Assembly’s own powers and resources.
• A Partnership Council has been established and formal policy agreements have been negotiated between the Assembly and local government, as well as a series of community strategies. These have created important new instruments for promoting co-operation and co-ordinating priorities.
• Local government, primarily working through the WLGA, has influenced the Assembly on some significant issues, including the introduction of policy agreements. But individual councils have been able to keep as much, if not more, discretion over local policy-making (for example, the Assembly has not sought to direct funds to schools as has happened in England).
• The Labour Party’s predominance in the WLGA and the Assembly Cabinet has played an important part in shaping relations between local government and the Assembly. However, many councillors from non-Labour authorities consider that the WLGA did not fully embody their views.

Some leading figures in local government argued that the Assembly needed to define its spheres of responsibility clearly and then stick to them. Yet the authors conclude that tidy, mutually binding boundaries are impossible to achieve in practice. They do, however, recommend that the Assembly should offer a clearer strategic vision of its role and that of local government. It should also consider making its consultation procedures less onerous and more effective in engaging local government

Local government should, meanwhile, acknowledge that there is scope for increasing the part that the WLGA and professional associations (such as the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives) could play in improving policy development and dialogue with the Assembly.

Professor Martin Laffin, a co-author of the report, said: “There were concerns when the Welsh Assembly was established that it would crowd out local authorities and reduce their discretion over local decisions and local spending. Our findings suggest that this has not happened and that Welsh local government has been able to influence the Assembly while at least maintaining the discretion they held before devolution. The small number of authorities in Wales, the closeness of the Assembly to local government and the predominance of one political party at both levels play a part in explaining why this is the case. Likewise, the limits on the Assembly’s own resources for policy development. This is in contrast to England where central government is more remote from a much larger number of local authorities and ministers appear less impressed by local government as an important political constituency.”