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SUBMISSION TO GOVERNANCE COMMISSION FROM THE

CAMPAIGN FOR DEMOCRACY IN CANTERBURY DISTRICT

The Campaign for Democracy in Canterbury District is a working group composed of individuals from
amenity societies, residents associations and parish councils including the Canterbury Society, the
Whitstable Society, Herne Bay Matters, St Mildreds Area Community Society, the Kent Federation of
Amenity Societies, Save Kingsmead Field, the Alliance of Canterbury Residents Associations, St
Stephens Residents Association, Market Way Residents Association, Bridge Parish Council, and
Littlebourne Parish Council. In our discussions we have been guided by two key documents, Musical
Chairs published by the Centre for Public Scrutiny, and Rethinking Governance published by the Local
Government Association and the Centre for Public Scrutiny. This paper draws together ideas which
have come from meetings of this group over the course of this year. These are our initial
suggestions, and we will be developing them further in the light of the discussions which take place
in the meetings of the Commission. We are submitting them with the aim of assisting the
Commission and helping it to engage in dialogue with us and with the general public.

In this submission we focus on the first three steps in the five-stage process recommended in
Rethinking Governance.

Step 1: plan your approach and assess your current position

Rethinking Governance describes this first step as follows:
The first thing to do will be to establish the purpose of the work: why do you want and need to
change your governance arrangements? A variety of people in your council may have different views
of what this purpose is; this is why it is important to set down what those (potentially differing)
views are at the outset. This will give you a baseline on which to build, and judge, the rest of your
work. (page 5)

In the case of Canterbury City Council, the impetus for change has come first from members of the
public and then from Councillors themselves.

There is a strong sense of disconnect between the Council and the public. When local people say
that the Council doesnt listen, they do not mean that individual Councillors do not listen to what
they are saying, but that their concerns are not reflected in Council debates and decisions. They do
not expect the Council always to do what they want, but they look for more public
acknowledgement of those concerns, and they are frustrated that in key decision-making meetings,
members of the Executive do not engage with the evidence and arguments which are presented to
them.

Many Councillors, in all the parties, are also frustrated. Those who are not members of the
Executive may feel marginalised, unable to participate in the important decisions and therefore
unable to represent their constituents effectively. Those who are members of the Executive may
find it difficult to step out of line.

In the past few months we have attempted to diagnose more precisely the problems which lie
behind these discontents. The following list of problems summarises views expressed at a public
meeting organised by the CDCD in February, attended by 150 people, and further public meetings in
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Canterbury and Whitstable in June attended by about 80 people altogether, along with
conversations with members of the public at street stalls in Canterbury, Herne Bay and Whitstable.

PROBLEMS WITH THE EXISTING SYSTEM

1 Role of Councillors
Most Councillors are excluded from most of the decision-making. This prevents Councillors from
developing their expertise through serving on committees, and fails to utilise their skills base. In
turn it acts as a disincentive to people to stand for election to the Council. It also leaves the majority
of the electorate disenfranchised because their Councillors have little say in decision-making.

2 Lack of transparency
Councillors who are not members of the Executive are excluded not only from decision-making but
also from the information on which decisions are based. Key documents and other sources of
information are confined to a small group. This is turn means that important information is not
available to the electorate.

3 Relations between party groups
Because the Executive is composed entirely of members of the ruling group, there is little
opportunity or encouragement for Councillors from the different parties to work together. This is a
waste of available expertise and of opportunities to pool ideas and talents.

4 Conduct of meetings
There is an absence of vigorous and open debate in the Executive meetings where the important
decisions are made. Proposals and policies are not rigorously assessed and tested through criticism.
This contrasts with lively debate on other committees (AMPs, Scrutiny, Overview) where new
solutions can emerge through criticism and debate, but lead nowhere.

5 Powers of patronage
The fact that the members of the Executive are chosen by the Leader discourages independent
thinking. Councillors know that if they stray out of line they risk losing their membership of the
Executive. Members of the Executive are also tempted to find pretexts for absenting themselves
from debates in order to avoid the dilemma of whether to vote against the agreed line.

6 Undue focus on individuals
The concentration of power and responsibility on a Strong Leader leads to a focus on a single
individual, and a personalisation of the political culture. This does not make for a healthy
democratic system, or for a proper balance between the responsibilities and workloads of members
of the Executive and of other Councillors.

7 Engagement and consultation
Local people feel that the Council is unresponsive to their expression of their concerns. They feel
that the outcome of consultations is a foregone conclusion. They are not aware of any route by
which their own ideas and suggestions could be fed into the decision-making process. Where
consultation does take place, it is often too late in the process of decision-making to make any
difference, or it takes a rigid form designed not to elicit opinion but to manufacture support.

8 Checks and balances
The system of intended checks and balances does not work. The Overview and Scrutiny Committees
are supposed to hold the Executive to account, and the Area Member Panels are supposed to ensure
that the interests of people in the different localities are properly considered. In practice, if
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decisions by the Executive are challenged by any of those committees or panels, the Executive
simply reaffirms its original decision. If decisions which are challenged are then brought to full
Council, the issue becomes a vote of confidence in the Executive and members of the ruling party
feel obliged to support the Executive decision. In our experience the deliberations of Canterbury
Area Member Panel have been openly derided by some members of the Executive.

9 Role of officers
The system is not well suited to holding Council officers to account. Officers have to work primarily
with the Leader and portfolio holders on the Executive, and other Councillors are not in a good
position to question Officers decisions and recommendations because they are excluded from the
process.

Step 2: consider some design principles

Rethinking Governance describes this second step as follows:
If you have undertaken an initial assessment you will have identified some strengths (practice and
ways of working that you want to keep) and some weaknesses (ways of working that you want to
stop or change substantially) You can use this to develop some design principles They should be
tangible aims that you can return to in future to help you to come to a judgment on whether your
new systems are working or not. (page 7)

The problems listed above are, we believe, weaknesses of the present system. It will be important
not to reproduce them in the new Committee system, for instance by giving excessive power to, say,
a Policy Committee which is an Executive in all but name.

The claimed strengths of the present system are that it is cost-effective, allows clarity of
accountability, promotes speed of decision-making, and locates specific decisions within a clear
overall strategy. We would question whether these strengths are achieved in practice. In our
experience, decisions by the Executive are too often made in haste, without sufficient consultation
or debate, are then questioned or called in by other committees and passed to and fro, leading to a
sacrifice of speed and accountability and a lack of clear direction.

Be that as it may, the claimed strengths of the present system are desirable features to be aimed at
in the new Committee system. We therefore propose the following general design principles. The
new system should:

1. Involve all Councillors in policy-making and decision-taking;
2. Diffuse power so that it is not concentrated on a small group or one individual;
3. Encourage vigorous and open debate in all council meetings;
4. Ensure that proposed decisions and draft policies are evidence-based and can be thoroughly
examined, challenged and criticised;
5. Promote consensual cross-party cooperation where possible;
6. Consult and engage effectively with the public at an early stage in decision-making, and
inform the public if any future changes in timing or policy are to be made;
7. Empower local residents to participate actively in decisions which affect their own localities
and to take initiatives to improve the areas in which they live, in the spirit of localism;
8. Be transparent and accountable, sharing information between all the political groups, and
clearly specifying to the public the reasons for all proposed decisions;
9. Avoid cumbersome bureaucracy, and allow for speedy decision-making when needed;
10. Give value for money and not lead to an unnecessary increase in costs.

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We do not think that these design principles can be implemented simply by a return to the pre-2001
Committee system. The new system should retain from the old model the involvement of all
councillors and all parties in decision-making, but the aim should be a more efficient version which
meets the requirements of the evolving system of local government.

Step 3: think of ways to establish a system that meets the
requirements of these principles

We turn now to the more precise features of a Committee structure for Canterbury district. As we
have emphasised in the previous sections, however, structural changes are not in themselves
enough, and moving to a Committee system is not a simple administrative matter. We see the
following proposals as provisional and open to further refinement in the light of discussions.

What is meant by a committee system? The present structure of Canterbury City Council has no
lack of committees. We take the defining feature of a Committee system to be, as implied by the
Localism Act, the contrast with a system organized around the role of an Elected Mayor or Strong
Leader. A Committee system is one which recognises the sovereignty of the full Council, elected by
the public, as the source and wielder of power, although some of the sovereignty may be formally
delegated to specific committees.

However, this definition does not provide much guidance on what the exact structure of a
Committee system for Canterbury should be. As the briefing papers for the Commission show,
there is a tremendous diversity of systems, with no one model being more common than others.
The following proposals build on the defining feature of a Committee system, in the light of the
Design Principles listed above.

Bearing this in mind, the following would be a possible structure of new committees. It takes as its
starting point the Councils present administrative structure, though we note the Chief Executives
observation, in the paper Councils Officer Structure for the 26
th
September meeting of the
Commission, that this may not in the end be the most appropriate Committee structure. More user-
friendly names for the committees would in any case be needed in due course.

Direct Services: To cover the range of community and neighbourhood services including
parking, community safety, environmental and public health, housing and homelessness,
children and youth, and neighbourhood development.

Commissioned Services: To include refuse collection, street cleaning, cemeteries, toilets,
grounds, council owned buildings, cultural activities etc.

Strategy and Democracy: To cover corporate policy, commissioning and consultation, and to
act as conscience of the council, scrutinizing its work and ensuring that the District is
democratically governed, as well as acting as a standards committee.

Planning and Regeneration: To deal with development management and planning
enforcement, the local economy, regeneration projects, the visitor economy, and transport
policy.

Resources and Finance: To cover raising finance, procurement, asset management, tax
collection and budgeting, including grants to Parish Councils.

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The existing committees with specialist and statutory functions the Licensing Committee, Planning
Committee, and Whitstable Harbour Board would be retained, but the present Executive,
Standards, Scrutiny and Audit, and Overview Committees and the Political Management Member
Panel would disappear. Some of the functions of the Standards Committee and the Scrutiny and
Audit Committee would be performed by the Strategy and Democracy Committee, but a scrutiny
function should also be exercised by the full Council, which should be empowered to call in decisions
made by individual committees. The Area Member Panels should remain in place, with an enlarged
role and decision-making powers (see below).

Membership of these committees would allow Councillors to build up expertise in clearly
demarcated areas of Council activity. We do not believe that any single committee should have
overriding powers of direction. The membership of each committee should be cross-party. This
would go a long way to implementing the principles that all councillors should be involved in policy-
making and decision-taking, that there is debate between different political groups in each
committee, and that decisions are properly examined and challenged when necessary. (See Design
Principles 1, 3, and 4, above.)

There are a number of other questions to be considered abut the role and composition of these new
committees. These include the following:

What size should they be ?
There is no legal maximum. Setting aside the Area Member Panels, whose membership is
automatic, committees should be politically balanced and if possible also geographically balanced.
This would suggest a standard membership of perhaps ten for each of the new committees, with
most councillors serving on one or two committees. We do not think it wise to return to the old
Canterbury habit of letting the size of the committee be determined by the importance of the
subject. We think that all should be of roughly the same manageable size. We would also suggest
that no Councillor should serve on more than two of the new committees. This would serve to
diffuse power, and keeping committees to a manageable size would be efficient and economical.
(See Design Principles 2, 9, and 10 above.)

What roles should the committees have ?
Each committee should have a clearly demarcated area of responsibilities. Where issues cut across
the terms of reference of two or more committees, one committee should be identified as leading
on the issue, rather than referring it back and forth between different committees. This would meet
one of the key requirements of an efficient Committee system. (See Design Principle 9 above. )

What powers should be delegated to committees?
Committees, though ultimately responsible to the full Council, should have delegated decision-
making powers. This will ensure that all Councillors are involved in the business of governance, that
they are enabled to build up expertise by serving on committees, and that key information is made
available to councillors in all the parties. It would ensure that all proposed decisions are subject to
real debate. Councillors should however be able to demand that decisions be referred upwards, and
the full Council should be empowered to call in decisions. It should also be the responsibility of the
full Council to provide overall strategic direction. (See Design Principles 1, 3, and 8 above.)

Who should choose the committee members ?
We assume that this will have to be done by the parties though this might pose problems for small
formations. We recommend that they do this on the basis of the skills, knowledge and experience of
the Councillors concerned, and we recommend on-going training for all committee members.

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We also propose that the members of each committee should themselves elect the Chair of that
committee by secret ballot. This might help to address the problem of excessive powers of
patronage being exercised by the leadership of the largest party. We also propose that each
committee should elect a Vice-Chair who is a member of a different political group from the Chair.
The Chair, Vice-Chair, and one member of each of the other political groups represented on that
committee should all be included in agenda-setting and briefing meetings with officers. This would
promote greater transparency and sharing of information, and could also encourage a better way of
working between the party groups. Nothing can guarantee a more consensual approach, but this
would make it easier for committee members from different parties to work together. (See Design
Principles 5 and 8 above.)

How often should the committees meet?
Bearing in mind that too many meetings could push up costs, we would suggest every four to six
weeks for most of the year, with a break in the summer. (See Design Principle 10 above.)

What provision should there be for public involvement ?
Although a more open approach to public consultation is not intrinsic to a Committee system, the
revision of the Constitution which will be required is an opportunity to make better provision for
public involvement. Article 3 of the Constitution, dealing with Citizens and the council, is at present
divided into Citizens rights and Citizens responsibilities. Something needs to be added about
Councils responsibilities in this area. In particular, there should be written into the Constitution a
responsibility on the part of the Council and its committees to consult with the public at an early
stage in decision-making, before the options have been foreclosed. (See Design Principle 6 above.)

The opportunity should also be taken to review the guidelines in Part 5 of the Constitution dealing
with the rights of citizens to participate in meetings. Members of the public should have the right
(necessarily time-limited) to speak not only at the start of meetings but also at a later stage in
debates when they can respond to what Councillors have said. The aim should be for more
interaction between Councillors and members of the public, giving people a greater sense of
ownership of their Council.

Committees should be empowered to invite outside experts to participate in meetings, and to set up
working groups on specific issues to which members of the public with relevant expertise could be
co-opted.

Area Member Panels should have a special responsibility to engage with the public. They should
provide a channel by which people in a particular locality can bring their concerns to the Council,
introduce ideas and make recommendations. As already suggested above, they should also be given
some decision-making powers. The extent of these should be further debated. (See Design Principle
7 above.)

Conclusion

Much more will be needed in the way of detailed regulations and guidelines for committees, and
changes to the Constitution. Our concern here has been to offer a broad sketch of how we think the
potential benefits of a Committee system can be achieved, while avoiding its potential weaknesses.