Ian Mean Interviews Stephen Davies, Leader of Gloucestershire County Council

Gloucestershire faces a big shake-up in its six District Councils and the County Council as councillors brace themselves for changes with the government’s White Paper on Devolution out soon.

In an exclusive interview with Ian Mean, Business West’s Gloucestershire director and former editor of the Western Daily Press, Councillor Stephen Davies, the new leader of Gloucestershire County Council, faced some penetrating questions.

 IM: What are your top 5 priorities for Gloucestershire?

• Highways is top of the list. We are not going to fix every pothole in Gloucestershire before next May’s county council elections but we need to demonstrate that we are making a difference and looking at ways to get better at this.
• Housing. We are going to be asked to build a lot of houses in Gloucestershire and it is not our job as the County Council to decide where they go, but it is our job to make sure we get the infrastructure to support them like roads and schools. We should also include our work with the Integrated Care Board for surgeries and hospitals.
• Special educational needs. We are going to spend money on earlier intervention-finding people in the backlog where we can give some help. If we can reduce the waiting lists and get parents some help earlier that seems a sensible thing to do. If we can intervene early, it will also be cheaper in the long term.
• Adult social care. I think we do a pretty good job here. But I speak from personal experience. I lost my father-in-law earlier this year and I always thought we were a few weeks behind in what we needed and were eligible for in help and support. So, access to services must be clear and understood. The other thing is technology enabled care—my 94 year old father has never successfully used a mobile phone in his entire life, but as we meet the time when we need care, you and I are able to use smart phones. If technology means I can stay in my home, and I don’t need a visit from a district nurse we would probably prefer that and it’s cheaper.

“So, in the New Year we are going to do some work around tech enabled care, not forcing it on people, but we need to show them this is what we could do. Somewhere down the line this will support a continuum between hospital and care in the home.

• Urban and rural consistency. How do we make sure there is a consistency in the delivery of services. Do you get better delivery of adult social care in Gloucester than you would do in Coleford in the Forest of Dean? Are we continuing to support our rural communities as well as our urban ones?

IM: What about devolution with an elected Mayor? This seems to be the direction of travel for this Labour government. Will it bring more government money into the county? And do we face the prospect of Gloucestershire being parcelled up with another county? What is coming down the track here?

“I should simply say we don’t know because the White Paper on devolution has not been published yet but we expect it will be before Christmas. The Economic Growth Board meeting has been postponed until March because we will need to come up with a position on this.

“We need to be a little careful because previous governments have gone down this route, and then faced with public opposition have decided to spend their political capital elsewhere and abandoned them.

“There is a nervousness here and we need to see the government’s strength of commitment.

They want authorities to work together and we in Gloucestershire are too small for their number, they want a million plus, our latest estimated population figure is 659, 276.

“So, we need to work out what our best fit is, facing towards Bristol or some conglomeration of counties around us.

“It is also very clear that if we do not have a Metro Mayor there is a danger funding will not flow. 

“The Labour Government want to go to a single individual and say: Get it done. We need to make sure in Gloucestershire we don’t miss out on that. This government is working through the mayor system, and we don’t have a Mayor.

“A Mayor doesn’t make sense to me in a rural context. It seems to work better in a city like Manchester or Birmingham.

“There is also a growing message that the government will want to put in a layer and remove a layer. So, we are likely to go for some sort of unitary process at the same time.

“That will not be universally popular. Personally, I think the public only ever talk about “The Council”. I am not sure they understand the difference between a district, a borough and the county.

“My instinct is that unitary is not a bad thing. I have some issues with it about local planning.

“I think strategic planning is the prize here and this is why we may want to play the game.

The strategy will end up at the mayor level with the big decisions but delivery and the actual “doing” will still be a council responsibility, probably a unitary council.”

IM: We have six district councils and a county council - what are your thoughts about unitaries here?

“If you gave each of them the vote, I would suspect they would vote for this.

“I think it will be done to them and I don’t think they will get any choice. If the government holds its nerve and sets out to do this I think it will happen to them and they and we won’t get a choice.”

IM: Will your new Economic Growth Board, which replaced GFirstLEP, have any teeth? And how can it operate with little or no money?

“One of the things l liked about GFirstLEP was its independence although most of the money flowed through the county council. I have asked them to look at branding and make sure it doesn’t look or feel like the County Council. I want to make sure we bid for money as we are good at that—that’s how it gets its teeth. We need to listen to businesses about what they want and get out of the way when we can.

“This is not a department of GCC alone. It needs to have a feeling of independence.”