Alex Richards
Donor
Chapter 13: The Combined Authority
While there had been talk about forming a combined authority since they were first announced, it had been a near-universal sentiment in the negotiating team that we had both more pressing matters to sort out, and would need official backing from respective electorates before starting anything. As such, it was something which took a back seat to the border issues until after both the resolution of that and the elections of 2011.
A month later, however, matters were rather thrown accelerated by the arrival at the Town Hall of a rather thick, glossy magazine touting the benefits of the proposed new 'Erewash Super-Authority'. It was, naturally enough, from Ilkeston (which despite the best efforts of the local Liberals was something of a one-party state by the mid-2000s) and it soon transpired that a copy had been sent to every Urban district and parish council from Alfreton in the north to Castle Donington in the South, and from Little Eaton and Belper in the west to Nuthall and Gotham in the east. It was, in short, staggeringly expensive, and the only thing more shocking than the waste of public money that it undoubtedly represented was the contents.
It was, in short, blueprint for something rather along the lines of Kinnocks 'Supercouncils'. Ilkeston, according to pages three through eight at least, recognised the concern that many parishes and urban districts had about being swallowed up by Derby or Nottingham and was proposing to 'unite to form a strong alternative force' in the middle, the seat of which would, naturally, have to be centrally located and as it so happened that really made Ilkeston the only potential partner.
Even as I pondered how much of this was genuine, how much an attempt to secure power over the neighbouring parishes and how much was ego trip; two things struck me. The first was that there was no way this was going to get the required approvals from the county councils even if all the lower authorities actually agreed to it. The second, however, was that the Labour government which seemed to be an inevitability at the next election may well decide to back this. Labour had, after all, never formally abandoned the 'Supercouncil' idea, and it was already known that they felt the combined authorities were a weak step in the process of government reform. And given all that, it was vitally important- as I stressed to John Marshall who had taken over from Kenneth Chappell as the Conservative's go-to guy on these matters- that we got at least the basics of a more reasonable agreement in place less it be assumed by Westminster that this was the only option on offer.
It transpired that we were not the only ones to have come to this conclusion. While most of the outlying areas just ignored the document entirely, and both Derby and Nottingham County Boroughs were already discussing some form of combined authority with their respective immediate suburbs. With Castle Donington refusing to even respond to our initial overtures, and the suggestion of a deal with Beeston and Stapleford UDC overruled by the Conservatives in the council (with Labour not interested we were, after all, reliant on them to get any deal approved) we were thus left with the 'small' question of which parishes of SE Derbyshire RDC to get an agreement with.
The initial moves here were both obvious and well travelled. We approached both Breaston and Sandiacre and found both amenable to an agreement based around pooling infrastructure resources, a joint plan on house and road building and a plan for Long Eaton's Local Education Authority[1] to be expanded to cover elementary education in the parishes in return for guaranteed representation on the governing council.
Slightly further afield, my existing contacts with Martin Garnett bore fruit when he communicated that Draycott Parish Council was considering forming a deal with Breaston (there being many existing links between the two) and after some discussion he offered to serve as an intermediary to bring them into the deal. Meanwhile Sandiacre was approached by Risley Parish Council, who indicated that they wanted in on the deal, and that Hopwell were in such dire straits that they'd agree to practically anything and could be guaranteed to follow Risley into any agreement[2].
Further out, our tentative feelers were received with much less interest. Stanton-by-Dale had been economically devastated by the closure of the ironworks in 2010[3] and now felt there was no option but to accept Ilkeston's bailout offer, no matter how many strings were attached. Dale Abbey seemed to be sticking their fingers in their ears and pretending that nothing was happening, Robert Mee up in West Hallam invited me for a drink before telling me they were trying to organise their own agreement, and Stanley didn't think it was worth even talking about it.
With the Derby suburbs already ruling themselves out by default, the only question mark remaining was Ockbrook and Borrowash Parish. Perched between Spondon and Draycott, the parish council felt themselves very on the edge of two worlds- that of suburban Derby, and that of rural Derbyshire. Even more complex was whether they would plump for our own proposal (as pushed by the Conservatives in the group) or look to the West Hallam grouping. Thus while everyone else was broadly on the same page by March 2013, we found ourselves unable to continue until Ockbrook and Borrowash came to a final decision, and while the Conservatives were still eager, we in the Progressive Coupon were decidedly less convinced.
Cruddas's victory in 2013 proved to be decidedly less concerning than we had anticipated. After an election night in which Long Eaton had ended up receiving a fair amount of national attention due to the two recounts that finally saw David Simmonds- who had ended up as a Junior Minister in the Treasury- defeated in a count that, by chance, was taking place in the New Central Buildings due to an agreement with Ilkeston to alternate for general elections, Cruddas soon established that he had bigger fish to fry with council house building and improved social care than to resurrect the Supercouncils idea. Consequently to this, Labour locally gradually came to the conclusion that the combined authority was going to be the best they were going to get, and started taking more of an interest in it- something really quite annoying considering that we'd spent two years sorting things out just for more delays to emerge.
The 2014 local elections were thus being fought almost entirely on the basis of the combined authorities. For Long Eaton is was a case of thrashing out the details, and with Andrew managing to nab one of the Derby Road seats as the only change locally it was clear that the public were leaning more towards the smaller grouping. Meanwhile SEDRDCCG, sensing impending doom, stood a full slate of candidates in a desperate attempt to block the matter. It was to be the last march of the Octopi however, and apart from winning Dale Abbey and a couple of seats in the multi-member suburban wards of Derby, they performed very poorly across the board. Finally the election in Ockbrook and Borrowash firmly resolved their own questions- a rather heated selection process had been held, and after much argument the suburban faction had won out.
We finally had definite boundaries for the proposed combined authority. Now we simply had to implement it.
[1] I am pretty convinced this never existed at any point IOTL, but the original act established that Urban districts with a population over 20,000 would have control over elementary education and Long Eaton was some way over that by the 70s.
[2] OTL the two councils merged in 2015.
[3] A few years later than IOTL.
While there had been talk about forming a combined authority since they were first announced, it had been a near-universal sentiment in the negotiating team that we had both more pressing matters to sort out, and would need official backing from respective electorates before starting anything. As such, it was something which took a back seat to the border issues until after both the resolution of that and the elections of 2011.
A month later, however, matters were rather thrown accelerated by the arrival at the Town Hall of a rather thick, glossy magazine touting the benefits of the proposed new 'Erewash Super-Authority'. It was, naturally enough, from Ilkeston (which despite the best efforts of the local Liberals was something of a one-party state by the mid-2000s) and it soon transpired that a copy had been sent to every Urban district and parish council from Alfreton in the north to Castle Donington in the South, and from Little Eaton and Belper in the west to Nuthall and Gotham in the east. It was, in short, staggeringly expensive, and the only thing more shocking than the waste of public money that it undoubtedly represented was the contents.
It was, in short, blueprint for something rather along the lines of Kinnocks 'Supercouncils'. Ilkeston, according to pages three through eight at least, recognised the concern that many parishes and urban districts had about being swallowed up by Derby or Nottingham and was proposing to 'unite to form a strong alternative force' in the middle, the seat of which would, naturally, have to be centrally located and as it so happened that really made Ilkeston the only potential partner.
Even as I pondered how much of this was genuine, how much an attempt to secure power over the neighbouring parishes and how much was ego trip; two things struck me. The first was that there was no way this was going to get the required approvals from the county councils even if all the lower authorities actually agreed to it. The second, however, was that the Labour government which seemed to be an inevitability at the next election may well decide to back this. Labour had, after all, never formally abandoned the 'Supercouncil' idea, and it was already known that they felt the combined authorities were a weak step in the process of government reform. And given all that, it was vitally important- as I stressed to John Marshall who had taken over from Kenneth Chappell as the Conservative's go-to guy on these matters- that we got at least the basics of a more reasonable agreement in place less it be assumed by Westminster that this was the only option on offer.
It transpired that we were not the only ones to have come to this conclusion. While most of the outlying areas just ignored the document entirely, and both Derby and Nottingham County Boroughs were already discussing some form of combined authority with their respective immediate suburbs. With Castle Donington refusing to even respond to our initial overtures, and the suggestion of a deal with Beeston and Stapleford UDC overruled by the Conservatives in the council (with Labour not interested we were, after all, reliant on them to get any deal approved) we were thus left with the 'small' question of which parishes of SE Derbyshire RDC to get an agreement with.
The initial moves here were both obvious and well travelled. We approached both Breaston and Sandiacre and found both amenable to an agreement based around pooling infrastructure resources, a joint plan on house and road building and a plan for Long Eaton's Local Education Authority[1] to be expanded to cover elementary education in the parishes in return for guaranteed representation on the governing council.
Slightly further afield, my existing contacts with Martin Garnett bore fruit when he communicated that Draycott Parish Council was considering forming a deal with Breaston (there being many existing links between the two) and after some discussion he offered to serve as an intermediary to bring them into the deal. Meanwhile Sandiacre was approached by Risley Parish Council, who indicated that they wanted in on the deal, and that Hopwell were in such dire straits that they'd agree to practically anything and could be guaranteed to follow Risley into any agreement[2].
Further out, our tentative feelers were received with much less interest. Stanton-by-Dale had been economically devastated by the closure of the ironworks in 2010[3] and now felt there was no option but to accept Ilkeston's bailout offer, no matter how many strings were attached. Dale Abbey seemed to be sticking their fingers in their ears and pretending that nothing was happening, Robert Mee up in West Hallam invited me for a drink before telling me they were trying to organise their own agreement, and Stanley didn't think it was worth even talking about it.
With the Derby suburbs already ruling themselves out by default, the only question mark remaining was Ockbrook and Borrowash Parish. Perched between Spondon and Draycott, the parish council felt themselves very on the edge of two worlds- that of suburban Derby, and that of rural Derbyshire. Even more complex was whether they would plump for our own proposal (as pushed by the Conservatives in the group) or look to the West Hallam grouping. Thus while everyone else was broadly on the same page by March 2013, we found ourselves unable to continue until Ockbrook and Borrowash came to a final decision, and while the Conservatives were still eager, we in the Progressive Coupon were decidedly less convinced.
Cruddas's victory in 2013 proved to be decidedly less concerning than we had anticipated. After an election night in which Long Eaton had ended up receiving a fair amount of national attention due to the two recounts that finally saw David Simmonds- who had ended up as a Junior Minister in the Treasury- defeated in a count that, by chance, was taking place in the New Central Buildings due to an agreement with Ilkeston to alternate for general elections, Cruddas soon established that he had bigger fish to fry with council house building and improved social care than to resurrect the Supercouncils idea. Consequently to this, Labour locally gradually came to the conclusion that the combined authority was going to be the best they were going to get, and started taking more of an interest in it- something really quite annoying considering that we'd spent two years sorting things out just for more delays to emerge.
The 2014 local elections were thus being fought almost entirely on the basis of the combined authorities. For Long Eaton is was a case of thrashing out the details, and with Andrew managing to nab one of the Derby Road seats as the only change locally it was clear that the public were leaning more towards the smaller grouping. Meanwhile SEDRDCCG, sensing impending doom, stood a full slate of candidates in a desperate attempt to block the matter. It was to be the last march of the Octopi however, and apart from winning Dale Abbey and a couple of seats in the multi-member suburban wards of Derby, they performed very poorly across the board. Finally the election in Ockbrook and Borrowash firmly resolved their own questions- a rather heated selection process had been held, and after much argument the suburban faction had won out.
We finally had definite boundaries for the proposed combined authority. Now we simply had to implement it.
[1] I am pretty convinced this never existed at any point IOTL, but the original act established that Urban districts with a population over 20,000 would have control over elementary education and Long Eaton was some way over that by the 70s.
[2] OTL the two councils merged in 2015.
[3] A few years later than IOTL.