I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen messages on social media from someone complaining about ‘the council’. From day to day, I guess most people don’t pay much attention to how local government works and which council is responsible for what.
Until, of course, something appears to go wrong: your bins aren’t emptied; your child doesn’t get the school place you want; a housing estate is built on your favourite open space; your get verbally attacked (or worse) in the street; your car is damaged by a pothole in the road; a vital bus service is axed. At that point people cast around for somebody to blame, and alight on ‘The Council’ as the culprit.
And they may well be right, but the question then is, ‘which one’?
Local government is in a mess in this country. There is a confusing array of local councils with different titles – County, Unitary, Combined, Borough, District, Parish, Town. Some of these types of councils are responsible for all services, others have overlapping area coverage and divide the services between them. Some have directly elected mayors and others don’t.
In Cheltenham we have the County Council (Gloucestershire), the Borough Council and, in some parts of the town, Parish Councils.
Successive governments have starved local councils of funds, to the extent that some authorities have even gone bankrupt, although thankfully none in Gloucestershire. Even so, the United Kingdom is one of the most governmentally centralised countries in the Western World, with local government severely limited in what it can do compared with many other European countries.
The new Labour government plans to reverse this trend, by devolving more powers to local government, and encouraging councils to work more closely together, although whether the Treasury will grant enough additional funds or allow Council Taxes to rise to pay for these new powers remains to be seen.
In the meantime, here is a little quiz for you! Have a look at this list of important local services and see if you know which council is responsible for each service. I’ll provide the answers in my next column in a fortnight’s time!
| Adult Care |
| Bus Services |
| Car parking |
| Fire Service |
| Footpaths and rights of way |
| Housing |
| Parks and gardens |
| Planning |
| Police |
| Public Health |
| Roads and pavements |
| Rubbish collection |
| Schools |
| Taxi Licensing |
Enjoy!
Mike Farmer
Secretary, Cheltenham Labour Party
Article first published September 20th 2024 in the The Cheltenham Post