I don’t think that my argument suggests that single, centralised bureaucracy would be better at all - after all, we know that people are overwhelmingly interested in what happens to their family, their street and their local school or hospital, and no bureaucrat could offer the same level of local engagement as a locally-elected volunteer councillor. I think that ensuring that local government is intelligible in structure reduces barriers to engagement with local democracy and local services, and would be more efficient, no more and no less than that.

Doesn’t following your argument suggest that a single, centralised bureaucracy would be better than having any local Government at all?

I agree that there are ways in which public services could be streamlined - but it seems to me that there’s always a compromise between local decision-making and economies of scale. Some services appear to work well for relatively small units. Others - like education - don’t.

I also think there is an attraction in having different levels of Government acting as checks and balances on each other. Suppose we had only County level authorities in the mid-80s - vast tracts of the country would have had no Labour or Alliance politicians with any experience of running public services. I doubt that would have been good for the state of democracy.

Finally, I agree that many citizens don’t know the respective responsibilities of county vs district councils - but they probably have little clue of the different roles of central Government, various NHS bodies, or the police service. But don’t we need to take a step back and think about whether this matters, before deciding that the logical consequence must be reorganisation? With the development of services like directgov, can’t we make it simple for citizens to identify the service they want without thinking about the provider?

I can’t speak for the other ‘districts’ but I do know that many people in Oxford don’t know which council runs what - if they are even aware that they are covered by two councils.

When it comes to accountability, people often hold the wrong council to account for things they disagree with - how is that democracy in action?

I will admit to not being an expert on these issues, but why would you set up an inefficient system with one county and five district councils with different responsibilities for overlapping geographical areas, and five sets of duplication in HR, finance, administration etc? Why would you set up a system not fit for purpose where people don’t know which council provides which service or who to get in touch with for help? By all means, let’s argue about whether there are enough people to justify a unitary authority for Oxford, but surely we can agree that the current system is absurd.

I’m not sure what you’re basing your assertion that ‘the existing system is neither fit for purpose or efficient’ on.

Evaluation of the last round of local government simplification (the mid-90s abolition of counties like Berkshire and Avon) was pretty mixed as I remember it - places like Bristol dominated the joint arrangements (e.g. fire authorities) put in place to succeed the counties where the new authorities weren’t big enough of themselves, which meant that the cities did relatively well out of reorganisation and quality of provision in rural areas declined.

There were good reasons why Oxford failed to get unitary status in the 90s - and not just Labour’s maladministration of the city. I can’t see a Government that is less sentimental than the Major govt (with its obsession with recreating Rutland etc) pandering to Oxford Labour’s delusion that they could run decent social services or education on such a micro-scale.

To top that, most of the local legs of important services are delivered by quangos and not councils, when on the continent services ranging from hospitals and job centres to benefits payments and police are all delivered by local government. Why isn’t that the case in this country? Why do councils in Europe have powers of general competence whilst the UK has the far weaker powers of “well being”? And why all the financial controls over councils, unprecidented elsewhere in Europe?

I thought New Labour was into devolution of power, so why the drive to centralise structures and the reluctance to give back any of the functions taken off local authorities? This is purely a money saving exercise and has nothing to do with reviving local democracy whatsoever!

Justin - surely, if functions are transferred from the county to city and former district unitaries, then the staff will be TUPE’d across? Some upheavel, yes, but little actual change in personnel.