1995/6 Reorganisation

One of the advantages of reorganizing local government ever 22 years is that there are still people around who were involved at a senior level the last time.

As the Chair of Finance of West Glamorgan before reorganisation and of the City and County of Swansea after as well as being part of the shadow board I was closely involved with the reorganisation that created the City and County of Swansea. This reorganisation involved splitting West Glamorgan and Lliw Valley Councils and merging them with Swansea Council.

The first surprising thing that happened was the number of senior staff who retired. For example despite West Glamorgan being split into two the Chief Executive, Director of Education and the Director of Social Services, as well as all the senior highways staff at Swansea City Council, were not available to the new organisation. There was a loss of a huge amount of experience and knowledge as well as a substantial drain on the pension fund. When we started the recruitment process we were concerned about the number of senior staff left without posts but the worry soon became filling senior posts with suitably qualified staff.

Then there was the need to integrate ICT systems as all the staff needed to be placed on the same payroll and personnel systems.  All purchasing, accounting and payment systems had to be put on the same system. The telephone system needed to be integrated and staff relocated to the appropriate offices. This turned out to be both time consuming and expensive.

On the financial side both Council Tax and rents had to be harmonised within the same Council which meant both Council house rent and Council tax rises for the former Lliw valley residents. Whilst Council house rents could be harmonised over several years Council tax had to be equal on the first bill sent out by the new authority. Whilst the Council tax rise in the former Lliw Valley area was relatively modest elsewhere in Wales in the former Islwyn council area the Council tax rise was substantially larger.

Whilst it was difficult to allocate all costs correctly, the cost of reorganisation was over 5% of the total budget of the new authority.

Having read the “Williams commission” report that the ICT costs of the 1990s will not occur this time and the only costs to worry about will be the staff redundancy costs. As the voluntary mergers occur it will be interesting to see if they really have solved the ICT cost and compatibility problem.