Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007
Another substantial local government Act hit the streets on 30 October 2007. For it was then that the 246-section, 18-schedule giant known as the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 finally received the royal touch that magically transformed it from base metal bill into golden statute.



Local government does seem to receive regular legislative attention from central government. This is presumably because, at crunch election times, the centre seems to regard the public as fixing it with vicarious political liability for the acts and defaults of councils at local level. And there is a noticeable seam of central oversight in the Act, with frequent provision for ministerial consents, orders and regulations. While charting the genome of the Act is regrettably beyond the scope of a short article, the aim is to give a flavour of some of the more salient provisions.



Local government structures

How local government is structured and who does what is a source of much bafflement to those outside (and indeed many within) the sector.



Many parts of the country have two tiers of local authorities other than towns and parishes at grass-root level. So part 1 of the Act enables changes from two tiers to a single tier of local government when the Secretary of State invites or directs accordingly before 25 January. And, no doubt to address existing legal challenges to the process, section 21 effectively validates such invitations by the Secretary of State before the new provisions become effective.



Part 1 contains a handy self-assembly kit for those authorities heading for a unitary future, with provisions for residuary bodies, staff commissions and other things necessary to build a gleaming new piece of municipal furniture.



Stronger local leaders

Since the Local Government Act 2000, many authority decisions must be taken by local authority executives - that is, small groups of councillors (cabinets) which, except where there is an elected mayor, are usually led by a leader appointed by the authority.



Before the Act, it was for the authority to decide how it wished to distribute the discharge of executive functions. Now part 3 of the Act makes changes which (among other things) strengthen the position of leaders by giving them the primary power to do this. But while the pre-Act position can carry on for the time being, schedule 4 sets a timetable for when the new regime has to be in place for various different types of authority.



Local area agreements

Part 5 enables authorities to take on the 'leadership of place' role as part of the 'place-shaping' agenda charted by Sir Michael Lyons in his March 2007 report into local government role, funding and function.



A local area agreement (LAA) is an agreement between a council and its 'partner authorities' (the public authorities conducting the range of public functions in the authority's area). This must contain local improvement targets for the economic, social or environmental well-being of the authority's area, relating to the authority, partner authorities or others. So when the Secretary of State directs, the local authority must prepare a draft LAA specifying these targets, with the persons to whom each target is to relate and the period for which the LAA is to have effect.



Draft LAAs must be submitted for approval to the Secretary of State. So while, as the local government minister has pointed out, the new LAA regime places councils and their partners in the driving seat, there is nevertheless a ministerial back-seat driver.



Councillor empowerment

Individual councillors are to be given a moderate shot of spinach to enable them to refer matters to an overview and scrutiny committee, and also (where the executive leader thinks fit) to discharge any local authority function relating to the councillor's particular electoral division. The additional power-pack is installed courtesy of sections 119, 236 and 237 of the Act.



By-laws

Currently, by-laws need ministerial confirmation (see section 236 of the Local Government Act 1972). However, part 6 of the 2007 Act enables the Secretary of State to make regulations setting up a new by-laws procedure, whereby once authorities have consulted on, prepared and advertised draft

by-laws, they can be enacted without ministerial confirmation. Regulations may also enable enforcement of some classes of by-law by fixed penalty.



Audit Commission

External auditors already have extensive powers under section 6 of the Audit Commission Act 1998 to access documents and information, even if they are held by those outside authorities. Section 151 extends the reach of section 6 to include computer data, and also includes express power to inspect, copy or take away documents.



Local Ombudsman

Like a creature from classical mythology, the Local Ombudsman in England has three heads covering complaints from different parts of the country. The primary statute is the Local Government Act 1974 and this is amended, in particular by section 173 of the 2007 Act, to extend the ombudsman's remit beyond maladministration to service failure, or an alleged or apparent failure to provide such a service.



Ethical standards

Part 10 of the Act will move much of the councillor conduct investigation legwork from the Standards Board for England to authorities themselves for local determination under the strategic oversight of the board.



Local authority entities

While these may sound like something that a mad scientist might work up at dead of night in a fiendish laboratory, part 12 merely seeks to regulate a more extensive range of local authority-connected corporate and other bodies than the local authority-controlled and influenced companies currently falling under part V of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989.



For the purposes of the 2007 Act, an entity will be connected with a local authority if, according to 'proper practices' (see section 21(2) of the Local Government Act 2003), financial information about it must be included in the authority's accounts.



Involvement in health

Part 14 justifies this part of the Act's title by requiring authorities to make contractual arrangements for the involvement of people in the commission, provision and scrutiny of health and local authority social services functions in their areas.



Conclusion

Local authority advisers will already be knee-deep in the fine print of the Act, as with senior colleagues they put in place arrangements to accommodate the range of new requirements. But others whose clients have any dealings with local authorities will also wish to take a peek at these provisions to make sure their clients are up to speed, as far as necessary, with the changing local government landscape.



Bias decision taken out

A good end to 2007 for local authority lawyers and monitoring officers as the controversial March 2007 bias decision of Mr Justice Collins was, on 18 December 2007, taken out by a crack Court of Appeal unit in R (Ware) v Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council [2007] EWCA Civ 1359 (Lords Justice Mummery, Dyson and Wall).



A council decision to grant planning and hazardous substances consents had been quashed by Mr Justice Collins after certain members had decided to leave a material meeting in the light of advice from the council's lawyer that, if there were an ombudsman complaint, those members

would have to state what was said at a meeting with objectors and other residents which the councillors in question had previously attended.



Mr Justice Collins took the view that it was wrong for the lawyer to raise the spectre of an ombudsman complaint, since it was important that 'councillors should not be inhibited from carrying out the duties imposed upon them by the democratic system by over-cautious advice from monitoring officers'.



However, the Court of Appeal found that none of the advice given to the councillors was wrong or amounted to an immaterial consideration giving rise to a procedural irregularity or to unlawfulness in the granting of the consents. And it was necessary for the court to determine the appeal despite the fact that the council had now issued revised consents for the development, since the basis of the ruling of Mr Justice Collins was of concern to local authorities and the role of monitoring officers generally when advice is given to councillors.