South Oxfordshire District Council leader JOHN COTTON argues plans for a new 'super council' need more work to empower communities.

When I and the other district council leaders kicked off this debate nearly a year ago, our key aim was simple: to get people talking about how we can improve the services councils provide and that we all rely on.

Since then, almost-complete agreement has emerged on two important points. Firstly, that a step-change in some (perhaps many) services is necessary to meet the future aspirations of Oxfordshire residents. Secondly, that unitary councils are best placed to deliver that step-change.

The work done by two sets of consultants last year gives us some confidence that such unitary councils can provide those transformations without taxpayers being asked for more than they already give.

In part that comes from savings made by scaling things up; but it also comes from doing things differently.

However, it would be a mistake to conclude that a jump to unitary is all we need to do.

The change we seek must be based on an accurate diagnosis of the problems within the current system – we need to be sure we understand fully what is broken before we set out to fix it.

So, in that context, it’s interesting to read the county council’s recent proposals for a single unitary council in Oxfordshire.

The team inside County Hall has clearly worked hard on their proposition and it deserves our fullest consideration. The analysis is long and there are some promising signs.

Oxfordshire has a strong identity and a single unitary council could support that.

In fact, a single unitary council could leverage that identity to deliver far more than we already have; there is little disagreement that Oxfordshire has under-performed its economic potential in recent years and we need to correct that.

There are also areas of the proposal that need to be improved – particularly in securing maximum delegation of powers is available to those communities that wish to accept them.

The principle must be that we deliver the best possible outcomes at the most local level possible.

We must never lose sight of the communities that make our place great. The city and market towns have very different personalities – and very different local service needs - to the rural parts of our county.

It is crucial that any new system reflects this and I doubt the idea of having five 'area boards' for a population of 700,0000 or more passes the 'local' test in 'local government'. (It’s worth noting that Wiltshire – widely recognised as the exemplar of this model – has 18 boards for a population roughly two-thirds the size).

We should be looking to the success of initiatives like Neighbourhood Plans and how those have empowered local communities to shape the areas in which they live.

We can spread that idea from planning to other areas of community life, like public transport, social services and leisure facilities.

Another worrying concern is the proposed dependency of the new 'super-council' on the reserves of current ones. While cash might get services out of the hole they are in right now, that money can only be spent once.

I had hoped to see more of an entrepreneurial spirit in the county’s plans with ideas, for example, like sharing land-value uplift on planning permissions to invest more heavily in infrastructure and ensuring that reserves are used to transform delivery.

My hunch is that these issues, and others, come from a too-singular view of how we move on from the current two-tier system to a unitary model that is better able to deliver the future demands of our residents.

The proposals are a job started, but with plenty more to do.

So I will be working hard with councillors across Oxfordshire in the coming weeks to push current consensus on to a higher point: a new type of council that takes the best of what districts and county offer now and moulds that with radical improvement everywhere it is needed.

This article is part of a series on proposals for a 'super council' in Oxfordshire.