Max Caller

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Reorganisation isn't just about saving money, says Boundary Committee chair Max Caller.

To see Boundary Committee for England chair Max Caller one must have one's bag searched and then submit to frisking with a metal detector by a man who, rather worryingly, totes a large box of rubber gloves.

It turns out that these elaborate precautions are for the benefit of some nameless occupant of the same building, and not to protect the former Hackney LBC chief executive from anyone aggrieved by his latest proposals to sweep away a batch of district councils (LGC, 10 July).

Committee's recommendations

His committee's recommendations for unitary reorganisation in Devon, Norfolk and Suffolk have followed the pattern of the seven counties reviewed last year by opting for large councils. There would be single unitaries for existing Devon and Norfolk, while Suffolk would be split between a unitary council for the Ipswich and Felixstowe area, named North Haven, and another for the rest of the county.

The committee has left other, if less preferred, options on the table — a unitary Exeter and Exmouth, a unitary for Norwich, Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft and a single Suffolk council.

It has, though, rejected suggestions to create more than two unitaries in any area, angering those who wanted specifically rural councils for parts of each county.

Big is best?

Is Mr Caller someone who believes that big councils are best? "The size of these councils gets criticised, but one criteria for all new unitaries was neighbourhood engagement, and the challenge we set was for everyone to demonstrate how in the new council they would really improve neighbourhood engagement and how the they would take decisions closer to the citizen, for those decisions that belong there," he says.

"It would be misleading to say it is all gigantic and remote. It was the combination of strategic leadership and neighbourhood engagement that was essential."

He calls Devon CC's planned 28 community boards, each based on a market or coastal town, "very exciting" but wants further evidence of how these would work.

Under Devon's plan a variety of local interests would be represented on the boards. Only unitary or parish councillors could vote, to ensure that those who hold elected office cannot be outvoted by others.

"The next part is about hearing people's views and fleshing this out, making sure its not just a nice thing on paper, but can and will be turned into something that really puts decisions closer to people," he says.

"It's very easy to say these are super-size councils, but this is not about that. It is about the mix offered of strategic leadership and neighbourhood engagement and the
potential for better value for money."

One obvious objection to the committee's approach is while the community boards — and their Norfolk and Suffolk equivalents — were an essential part of their decision, nothing gives them permanence.

Unlike parish and town councils, these local boards enjoy no statutory status or powers and could be modified, neutered or even abolished by a future unitary administration.

Mr Caller dismisses this concern. "Any new authority coming in takes its own decisions. I cannot set binding requirements, but if a leadership makes promises on neighbourhood engagement and then fails to deliver, no doubt the electorate will reflect on that," he says.

"It is they who are making the promises, not me. We know some parishes do very well, but others do not have much ambition. It is not about statutory powers, but political and managerial leadership."

Even if neighbourhood engagement though local boards proves a success, it is unlikely to appease those who see re-organisation as the sweeping away of local councils and their replacement by large and remote ones. Most districts have responded furiously to the committee's refusal to entertain unitaries based on two or three existing councils. This suggests that Mr Caller may have an uphill struggle to convince them localism will not be lost.

His reason for rejecting proposals such as South Devon & Dartmoor, West Suffolk and Norfolk Coast was not, he explains, that these were necessarily bad in themselves but rather that the committee had to find a workable solution for the whole of each county.

"We have not accepted the totality of anyone's argument," he says. "Our challenge was to find something that was, in our judgment, best for the county as a whole.

"Our job was to advise the secretary of state on which would be the best pattern of unitary government for each county as a whole. And that means we could not recommend something that might be really good for one area, but not for the whole county. Any pattern that worked really well for 80% of the population but not for the other 20% would have been a failure."

Nor, Mr Caller insists, were the committee's eventual choices based on finding a fit with the government's preoccupation with finding efficiency savings from economies of scale.
Better value may result from the new unitaries, but that would not itself have been a sufficient reason to create them.

"Cost savings were not seen as a fundamental driver and people who say we did are wrong," he says.

One thing Mr Caller did wish to avoid was a new pattern of unitaries that could not have worked without an elaborate machinery of shared services.

Mr Caller explains: "Some strategic issues work best at a larger level and some of the propositions we got for smaller councils came with plans for the coordination of strategic issues that pretty much mirrored having a county council over the top to do it.

"Councils nowadays have to fight for resources with regional development agencies, in Europe and elsewhere, and they have to be able to punch their weight for economic development.

"That does not make it a requirement to be big, but it is a requirement to have the vision of the whole picture, and so this has not been a 'sizeist' exercise, but about
capacity and vision."

The consultation on the proposals, which will run until 26 September is, he insists, genuine.

But it will not be an opportunity for those district leaders who have denounced the proposed unitaries as, variously, "ludicrous", "extremely disappointing" or "a betrayal" to try to bend the committee's ear by shouting loudly down it.

"This is a genuine consultation and I'm interested in views on the strategic concepts and detailed boundaries, for example if people say one parish does or does not belong somewhere we want to know," he says.

"But more importantly than just hearing opinions, what will weigh most heavily is not screaming and shouting and emails, but a piece of evidence about why people think what they do, why it would be good if we did this, and bad if we did that.

"I don't want screeds of stuff, and sending me petitions is not evidence. What I want is something that sets out reasons why people think as they do and I will weigh that
heavily."

The initial proposals were a process largely contained within local government. "We did not get a lot from the public, but then not many people have the understanding and capacity to plan for a county as a whole, it's not what people do in the Dog & Ferret," Mr Caller says. But from now on the public will be involved and those who support the unitaries will have to fight a battle against local sentiment.

Meanwhile, council officers whose jobs will be affected, or possibly even abolished, as a result of these impending upheavals cannot do much more then wait and watch.

Preferred options

• Unitary Devon

• Unitary Norfolk

• Unitary North Haven (Ipswich, Felixstowe and hinterland)

• Unitary for remainder of Suffolk, except Lowestoft.

Max Caller

Max Caller is something of a rarity in local government in that he was an engineer who became a chief executive at a time when lawyers normally filled the post.

He became Barnet LBC's director of technical services in 1987 and its chief executive two years later.

In 2000 he took on being chief executive at Hackney LBC, a post advertised at the time as "the worst job in local government". He stayed until 2004 after which he was briefly interim chief executive at Haringey LBC and took on various consultancy roles.

Mr Caller became chair of the Boundary Committee for England in 2007 in a post that was never intended to be full time, but where the unitary reviews have consumed a lot of his attention.

He has carried out consultancy work on elections and democratic processes around the world and was in Kenya as part of the Commonwealth observers mission as the disputed elections descended into violence last Christmas.