Two new unitary authorities have been formed in Dorset following the merger of nine councils, while in Northamptonshire ministers announced a year-long delay to establishing its new unitaries. Chris Ames looks at what it means for the counties’ roads.
As unitary authorities, all the new councils have or will have responsibility for their roads, some of which will have transferred from the old counties and some inherited from their constituent authorities.
In Hardy country, Dorset County Council and the former East Dorset, North Dorset, Purbeck, Weymouth and Portland and West Dorset councils formed a new Dorset Council.
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole councils were combined to form a single Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council. Dorset Council now serves 377,000 people, making it one of the largest unitary authorities in the country.
The old county council was the highway authority for a large part of the county and therefore most of the new Dorset Council’s area, while two of BCP’s constituent authorities –Bournemouth and Poole – were already unitaries.
A spokesperson for BCP told Highways that in the run-up to the change, a ‘massive’ joint effort was made within both BCP and Dorset Council shadow authorities to decide their highways functions and identify staff who would switch over to the new councils.
Staff for both Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole have all transferred into the new BCP authority. Similarly staff for East Dorset, other districts and the old county council transferred into Dorset Council.
Highways funding also had to be split between the new authorities. Preparation for this took place last year. Budgets were disaggregated across services through agreement between officers and then budgets were approved for 2019/20 by the BCP shadow council in February 2019.
The existing councils also had ongoing highway maintenance term contracts at the time of the reorganisation.
The BCP spokesperson told Highways: ‘All contracts were reviewed across the previous authorities prior to April and those that could be altered were activated.
‘Business continuity was the key factor and some previous arrangements due to contractual arrangements in place have novated [the substitution of a new contract for an old one] to the new authority. Over time such arrangements will be harmonised.’
In Northamptonshire, where reorganisation was made necessary by the serious financial trouble in which the county council found itself in, the situation is somewhat simpler due to its entirely two-tier structure. At present it is not clear whether the outcome for the county’s highways will be the same as in Dorset.
The county council, which has highways responsibilities for the whole area, and seven district councils will be replaced by two new unitary councils.
One authority – North Northamptonshire – will cover the existing districts of Kettering, Corby, East Northamptonshire and Wellingborough, while the other – West Northamptonshire – will cover the existing districts of Daventry, Northampton and South Northamptonshire.
North Northamptonshire – to the North and West of the existing county – will have a population of just under 350,000, while West Northamptonshire – to the South and West – will cover more than 400,000 residents.
Proposals from local government secretary James Brokenshire had initially envisaged the new councils being fully operational from 1 April 2020 but the unitaries will now not be established until April 2021.
A joint statement from the leaders of the eight councils that will be abolished said the delay ‘gives us more time to plan carefully and confidently for the future’ as 2020 ‘was always going to be a tight timetable to meet if we were going to transform services as well as ensuring that they were safe and legal on that date’.
Mr Brokenshire said: ‘While I recognise that a delay in implementation will mean [the] potential savings estimated in the proposal will not be realised for another year, I am clear that the extended implementation period means we can be confident that there will be a safe and effective transition to all the new service delivery arrangements across the whole of the area.’
The county council currently has a long-running contract with a KierWSP joint venture under the brand Northamptonshire Highways and employs very few staff on the client side. The contract was extended for four years from 2016 at a cost of around £50m per year, which means that – perhaps conveniently – it will expire at the time of the reorganisation. Last autumn the council announced a further cut totalling £500,000 across 2018/19 and 2019/20.
The council told Highways that at this stage no decisions have been taken on how the management and maintenance of the county’s roads will be organised. This includes whether services will be divided between the two new unitaries or remain countywide.
In May it was announced that a trust would take over the running of children’s services in the county after an independent commissioner said that he could not recommend ‘any option that will lead to the disaggregation of children’s services to the two new unitary councils’.
