LGA Governance


Agenda item

Agenda item

LGA support offer - devolution

Minutes:

LGA support offer - devolution

 

 

 

Rebecca Cox, Principal Policy Adviser, introduced the paper. She asked that members give officers a steer on how the LGA’s support offer on devolution could progress, asking which areas support was needed (such as on governance or knowledge sharing). She advised board members that there would be an event in June and that it would be useful to have guidance on its content. 

 

In the discussion which followed, board members raised the following points:

 

·         As it was clear there were shared elements to devolution deals, the LGA should focus on information it could provide on those elements so that all councils were able to take up the most ambitious offer possible.

 

·         It would be useful to know the progress of all devolution deals and to have examples of how things would improve in specific areas as a result. 

 

·         As devolution would now be a significant part of local government, it would be useful if the topic was embedded in the LGA’s training programmes. Councillors would need the right skills to ensure they were equipped for changes.

 

·         Members commended the planned member working group on how the LGA should work with combined authorities and Mayors as part of its governance arrangements.

 

·         The LGA should play a role in developing the scrutiny arrangements of combined authorities. It was discussed how backbench councillors could be engaged in the scrutiny process and a piece of work on scrutiny was requested.

 

·         There needed to be a wider range of members involved in the devolution journey and it was suggested that information on devolution should be made more accessible to councillors. The LGA hub was not necessarily best placed to provide support to members, and the training focus needed to be for both councillors and officers. Those in different areas also needed to learn from each other and a system where members could talk to each other and share experiences was suggested.  

 

·         There had been complexities in some areas when forming combined authorities and there was concern that there were still legal issues in the devolution bill which members had no collective understanding of.

 

·         The asks of and successes of devolution deals should be made more available to members so that there could be consistency in requests to government when negotiating devolution deals. Authorities would then be able to learn from each other.

 

Actions:

 

1.    LGA officers to include scrutiny in the wider governance work.

 

2.    With reference to existing devolution deals, LGA officers to share as far as possible the proposals made by places.

 

Decisions:

The City Regions Board:

1. Noted the report.

2. Agreed the next steps in taking forward the LGA’s devolution support offer.

 

 

 

 

Supporting documents: