inlogovINSTITUTE OF LOCALGOVERNMENT STUDIES

Hanging in there: What happened to the NOC councils after May 2014?

INLOGOV Briefing Paper - June 2014Chris Game, Honorary Senior Lecturer

Front cover image, copyright Wikipedia user Nilfanion

Image used under Creative Commons licensing

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Elections are a big deal: we’re entitled to results and outcomes, quickly

As we saw in 2010, even our wildly disproportional ‘First-Past-The-Post’ or plurality electoral

system doesn’t always achieve its principal objective of conjuring legislature majorities out of

minority votes. During those famous ‘Five Days in May’ we had stacks of election results, but,

until the Downing Street Rose Garden, no election outcome.

In our local elections it happens every year. For usually between a fifth and a third of all councils

– ‘hung councils’ as they tend to be labelled in the local government world – the ‘results’ of their

elections are reported as NOC (No Overall Control) and, as far as the reporters are concerned,

that’s how they stay, in perpetuity.

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Some of the national media produce results maps – like that on the cover of this Briefing Paper

– that leave NOC councils as literal black holes. Others, like the BBC, use tables of councils and

seats won and lost by the various parties: Labour 82 (6 net gains), Conservatives 41 (11 net

losses), Liberal Democrats 6 (2 net losses)1. Then right at the bottom of the table, after UKIP,

the Greens, the BNP, Independents, and, for some reason, the council-less, member-less

Socialists, we have No Overall Control 32 (8 net gains).

It’s not an expression used in a parliamentary context – not that ‘hung parliament’ is any more

informative – and, encountered for the first time, it seems designed at least to bewilder and at

worst alarm, bringing to mind images of packs of out-of-control, newly elected councillors

roaming the streets of their towns and cities wreaking who knows what kind of havoc, for

apparently the next four years.

The misleading nature of the NOC designation is regularly pointed out – most recently by

Democratic Audit (DA), the excellent blog run by the LSE’s Public Policy Group2. As DA notes,

NOC gives no hint that a perfectly conventional ruling administration will be formed, probably

within days, but signifies only that no single party has a majority of council seats. It’s misleading

too, DA suggests, in excluding from the lists of councils gained and lost those in which a party

has the largest, but minority, share of councillors. It distorts the parties’ true performances – this

year at the expense of the Conservatives and Lib Dems, whose councils ‘won’ would increase

respectively by a third (41 to 58) and a half (6 to 9), compared to Labour’s barely 10% increase

(82 to 91).

But DA’s greater concerns are with the bigger democratic picture, and it sees the NOC label as

one of a whole catalogue of ways in which all of us – and particularly the civically disengaged

young people politicians claim to be so concerned about – are kept lamentably under-informed

about all aspects of local elections3.

And here’s the difference between national and local government. Given the amount of pre-

election scaremongering in 2010 about the dire consequences of a hung parliament – a run on

1 The figures for net gains and losses can vary slightly from one set of reported results to another, according to whether the baseline for previous control is taken as the eve of the election or an earlier date – e.g. immediately following last year’s elections. 2 http://www.democraticaudit.com/?p=5602. 3 http://www.democraticaudit.com/?p=3494.

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the £, sterling crisis, economic meltdown, IMF intervention, the end of civilisation – there was a

huge pressure on the leading players to come up with something that could be sold to us as at

least short- and optimistically medium-term ‘Control’. We were therefore informed of this

outcome, the Coalition Agreement, almost literally within an hour of its settlement.

In local government, all too often, we’re not told – not even the residents and electors of the

NOC councils themselves – as was highlighted this time round not just by DA, but also by Nick

Golding, editor of the Local Government Chronicle4. In the course of its local elections

coverage, LGC monitored the websites of both individual councils and local newspapers – with

not just disparate and depressing, but often downright ‘incomprehensible’, results:

“It might be considered disappointing that some newspapers buried their coverage or failed to work out how individual results could change the political complexion of an authority – although in an era in which the local press is starved of expertise and resources, perhaps this was unsurprising.

“What was incomprehensible was the failure of many authorities to highlight their polls. Many council homepages made no reference to the elections and hid elections news in obscure corners; many seemed incapable of promptly posting the results for each ward or revealing how their chamber’s political make-up was changing as a result. Others seemed to think it was the job of someone else to tweet results.”

Of all the defining characteristics of local authorities, the one that most differentiates them from

the other local bodies with whom they increasingly work, and that gives them their unique

legitimacy, authority and accountability, is surely their direct election. As Golding exhorts:

“Local elections are therefore a big deal. Councils should do everything in their power both to generate excitement about the poll and ensure people know their representatives’ identity.

Such tasks are not gimmicks – they are essential components of serving as place leaders. If councils cannot show an interest in their own elections, it is hard to see why their residents should.”

‘Everything in their power’! Even with a Friday count, the results of Thursday local elections –

overall, with party totals, gains and losses, as well as by ward – ought to be available at least by

the weekend, within a clearly signposted click from the home page of the council’s website. If

one party has an overall majority of seats and will form a one-party administration, this too

should be indicated, together with the date of the Annual Council Meeting at which this will be

4 ‘LGC view: Failure to highlight elections hampers legitimacy’, 28 May, 2014 - http://www.lgcplus.com/opinion/lgc-view-failure-to-highlight-elections-hampers-legitimacy/5071293.article.

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formally confirmed. In the case of the NOC councils considered here, there should be at least

some brief explanation of the implications of no one party having a majority, and again an

indication of when the prevailing uncertainty will be resolved.

As ever with local government, some authorities are exemplary. One such was West

Lancashire BC, with its only two parties having exactly the same number of seats [why on

earth doesn’t the Boundary Commission require councils, as in many other countries, to have

odd numbers of seats?], and a three-week hiatus until its AGM. It produced, within days, a

model holding statement of the “next step for the Borough’s political management structure”,

explaining that the incumbent Conservative Mayor would have the casting vote at the Annual

Meeting, and that therefore the new Mayor would probably be another Conservative, who in turn

would have a casting vote in the determination of the Council Leader of a likely Conservative

minority administration.

It was informative without, as far as I could see, compromising even the most fastidious officer’s

political neutrality. It was also, though, at the ‘helpful’ end of a really rather a long scale – at the

other end of which were the councils who took up to a fortnight even to post their election

results and the many more who provided no information at all about even the date by which the

details of a new administration would be announced.

Of course, without these laggards, there would be no need for this Briefing Paper, whose more

or less sole purpose is to provide in a single place a record of the eventual outcomes of the

elections in this year’s 32 hung or NOC councils, and of how, in some of the more noteworthy

cases, these outcomes emerged. Which would be fine by me: it’s a mostly interesting and

sometimes amusing exercise, in some ways frustrating – not least because I know some of its

details will have changed before it even appears – but it’s one that local government would be

much the better for rendering redundant.

Are NOC councils increasing, and, if so, are we relaxed about it?

As shown in Table 1, the 32 NOC councils represented a net increase of 8. It took the number

of NOC councils in England to 70 and in Great Britain to 102 or 25% of the total, and followed a

similar increase in last year’s county council elections. Part of the explanation, of course, is

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UKIP. Its 331 councillors on English principal councils5 may still be less than a sixth of the

Liberal Democrats’ representation, but in both years its handfuls of seats have proved sufficient

to deprive all three bigger parties of overall control in one or more councils.

Even the 2012 total of 79 NOC/hung councils, though, represented one in every five. So I was

slightly taken aback by the LGC headline: One-party states ‘more worrying than no overall

control’, which made NOC sound like some local government vogue moderne that needed

explaining and defending, even at the cost of alienating those from beyond-the-pale ‘one-party

states’6. I was more surprised still that the Executive Director of the LGA, Michael Coughlin,

and the Chair of its Improvement and Innovation Board, Cllr Peter Fleming, should feel it

necessary to reassure LGC readers that they were “relaxed” about this latest NOC rise.

“Actually”, soothed Cllr Fleming, but sounding as if he meant ‘amazingly’, “there are some

places where it [NOC] has worked for a very long time”, adding that “NOC is not a new

phenomenon”.

Well, you’re certainly right there, Councillor. In fact, I recall some INLOGOV colleagues saying

the selfsame thing barely a quarter of a century ago7. In fairness, though, it’s quite likely no

reminder is needed. The LGA duo’s words did seem ill-chosen, but no doubt the explanation is

that they had Association goodies to promote, both to NOC authorities and more generally8.

Anyway, this is not the place for a NOC vs one-party states debate, with or without evidence. All

I propose doing is to add some statistics to Cllr Fleming’s ‘not a new phenomenon’ point.

5 House of Commons Library, ‘Local elections 2014’, Research Paper 14/33 (June 2014), p.8 - http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/RP14-33/local-elections-2014. 6 David Paine, ‘One-party states “more worrying than no overall control’, lgcplus, 9 June, 2014 - http://www.lgcplus.com/5071725.article. 7 Steve Leach and Chris Game, Conflict and Cooperative Politics in the Hung Counties, Common Voice, 1989; Steve Leach and John Stewart, The Politics of Hung Authorities (Macmillan, 1992) 8 See LGA, No overall control: Learning further lessons from councils without a majority administration (March 2014) - http://www.local.gov.uk/documents/10180/5854661/No+overall+control/0d2fa381-187e-4dac-9d2f-7848d5b501ae; http://www.local.gov.uk/sector-led-improvement.

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Figure 1 plots the huge fluctuations we’ve seen since the reorganisation of local government in

the overall control of our councils – and also shows, incidentally, why there are today rather

fewer of those ‘forever one-party states’ than there were before the depths plumbed respectively

by the Conservatives in the 1990s and Labour in the 2000s. For present purposes, it shows

how, throughout that whole period, roughly one in every three GB councils was under NOC. In

fact, the last little peak in the NOC line is accounted for mainly by the 2007 change in Scotland’s

local electoral system from First-Past-The-Post to the more proportional Single Transferable

Vote (STV), which immediately increased the number of Scottish NOC councils from 6 to 27.

And the modest scale of the peak results from the Conservatives in those same 2007 elections

gaining majority control of no fewer than 36 previously NOC councils – the total of which in

England alone had numbered 124.

These figures provide a context for the last two years’ rise in English NOC councils about which

we’re encouraged – and can obviously afford – to be relaxed, since it has taken the number

from 48 to what by recent standards is still a not terribly worrisome 70. The almost complete

explanation of the previous precipitate drop in GB NOC councils from over 30% in 2009 to 20%

in 2012 can be detected in Figure 1, but is seen much more clearly in Figure 2: the collapse of

the Lib Dems in the even more brutal terms not of councils controlled but of councillor numbers.

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The now broken NOC line can be seen to follow closely the fortunes of the Lib Dems, the only

significant divergence coming in the past couple of years as their continued decline has been

accompanied by the rise of UKIP and the upturn again in the number of NOC councils.

Filling the black holes: the election outcomes in the 32 NOC councils

It was noted above (p.2) that one of Democratic Audit’s objections to the NOC designation was

that it excluded NOC authorities from the lists of councils gained and lost by the various parties

and thereby distorted the reporting of their true electoral performance. To attempt at least

partially to correct this distortion DA produced a running breakdown of NOC councils’ results as

they were announced, showing which and how many had been ‘won’ by each party9.

In some instances, particularly where one party has significantly more seats than all the others,

it does provide a kind of answer as to who ‘won’ the election. But, as DA itself readily

acknowledges, even with this information local residents are left with no definitive clue about

which party or combination of parties will eventually ‘run’ the council, or whether they will do it

through a minority, coalition, or less formal partnership administration. Certainly Portsmouth 9 See link from http://www.democraticaudit.com/?p=5602.

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residents, to pick just one example, would have had no clue that the Conservatives, with just 12

councillors out of 42, and seven fewer than the ousted Lib Dems, would end up running the

council as a single-party minority administration, with the support of Labour and UKIP.

Single-party minorities are undoubtedly the current NOC administration of choice, outnumbering

by more than 2 to 1 two- or multi-party coalitions – the cause of the latter possibly having

suffered from events at Westminster – the Palace thereof, not the council. However, several

new and – how to put this – interesting-looking coalitions have been negotiated over the past

few weeks, and the impression one formed in 2010, that MPs could often learn a thing or two

from their local counterparts about managing these situations, has been generally reinforced.

What follows, then – in a kind of companion piece to my elections preview Briefing Paper10 – is

an attempt to fill in the black holes left in the map on the cover: an account of the real results of

the May 22nd local elections, mainly – to save on an index – following the order in which councils

are listed in the accompanying table.

10 The 2014 Local Elections- a preview - http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-social-sciences/government-society/inlogov/briefing-papers/2014/2014-local-elections.pdf.

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NOC councils following the May 2014 elections – results and outcomes

Before and after elections

Post-election/most recent seats Outcome (NC = No change)

C L LD UKIP G Indep/ Other

LONDON BOROUGHS (2) – whole council elections

Havering NOC – NOC 22 1 - 7 - 19 Res’ Gp + 5 + 1 NC – Con minority

Tower Hamlets (Mayor) (Lab – NOC) 4 20 - - - 18 T H First + 3 vacs.

NC – Mayor Lutfur Rahman (Tower Hamlets First) re-elected

METROPOLITAN BOROUGHS (4) – one-third of council elected

Calderdale NOC – NOC 19 25 6 - - 1 NC – Lab minority Kirklees NOC – NOC 18 32 11 - 5 3 NC – Lab minority Stockport NOC – NOC 10 22 28 - - 3 NC – Lib Dem minority Walsall NOC – NOC 21 29 3 3 - 2 + 1 + vac NC – Con/LD coalition

UNITARY AUTHORITIES (7) – one-third of council elected, exc. Milton Keynes

Bristol (Mayor) (NOC--NOC) 15 31 16 1 6 1 NC – Mayor not up for election Milton Keynes (all-out) NOC – NOC 18 25 13 1 - - Lab minority replaces Con minority N E Lincolnshire Lab – NOC 10 21 3 8 - - Lab majority cut to technical minority Peterborough Con – NOC 28 12 4 3 - 7 + 3 Con minority replaces majority

Portsmouth LD – NOC 12 4 19 6 - 1 Con ultra-minority, with Lab & UKIP backing, replaces LDs

Southend-on-Sea Con – NOC 19 9 5 5 - 12 + 1 Ind/Lab/LD coalition replaces Cons Thurrock Lab – NOC 18 23 - 6 - 2 Lab minority replaces majority

NON-METROPOLITAN DISTRICTS (19) – one-third of council elected, exc. Hart

Basildon Con – NOC 17 10 1 12 - 2 Con minority (or Con/UKIP coalition?) replaces Con majority

Basingstoke & Deane NOC – NOC 29 17 8 2 - 4 NC - Con minority

Brentwood Con – NOC 18 3 11 - - 4 B’wood First + 1

Brentwood Accord (LD/Brentwood First/Lab/Ind) replaces Con majority

Castle Point Con – NOC 20 - - 5 - 16 Canvey Island Inds Con minority replaces majority

Colchester NOC – NOC 23 8 24 - - 4 + vac. NC – LD/Lab/Indep coalition Gloucester NOC – NOC 18 9 9 - - - NC – Con minority Great Yarmouth Lab – NOC 14 15 - 10 - - Lab minority replaces majority

Hart (all-out) NOC – NOC 14 - 9 - - 9 CC Hart + 1

Con/LD/CCH coalition replaces Con minority

Maidstone Con – NOC 24 2 19 4 - 5 + vac. Con minority replaces majority Mole Valley NOC – NOC 19 - 15 1 - 6 NC – Indep-led Con/Indep coalition Pendle NOC – NOC 19 18 11 - - 1 (BNP) NC – Con/LD ‘shared executive’ Purbeck Con – NOC 12 - 11 - - 1 Con minority replaces majority St Albans NOC – NOC 29 10 17 - 1 1 NC – Con minority Stroud NOC – NOC 21 20 3 - 6 1 NC – Lab/Green/LD alliance

West Lancashire Con – NOC 27 27 - - - - Con minority replaces majority; c’ttee decisions to rest on Chair’s casting vote

Weymouth & Portland NOC – NOC 11 15 7 1 - 2 Lab-led all-party administration replaces Con-led one

Winchester NOC – NOC 28 3 25 - - 1 NC – Con minority

Worcester NOC – NOC 17 15 1 - 1 1 Con minority replaces Lab/LD/Green coalition; ex-Lab Indep is Mayor

Wyre Forest NOC – NOC 15 9 - 5 - 7 + 4 + 2 NC – Con minority

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London boroughs

The headlines of the all-out London borough elections were that Labour increased its

domination to 20 of the 32 boroughs, winning Croydon and Hammersmith & Fulham from the

Conservatives, Redbridge – for the first time – from a Conservative/Lib Dem partnership

administration, and Merton, where it had previously had minority control. The Conservatives

took Kingston upon Thames from the Lib Dems, and now control nine boroughs, leaving the Lib

Dems with just Sutton. Two boroughs were left under NOC: Havering and, if you include

mayoral authorities, Tower Hamlets.

In Havering the Conservatives actually surrendered their nearly two terms of overall control a

month before the elections, when the incumbent Mayor and former council leader, Eric Munday,

and two former mayors crossed the floor and joined UKIP, in what was the second batch of

three such defections in well under a year. Munday in particular harboured numerous

grievances – immigration, NHS underfunding, shortage of schools and housing, immigration,

Cameron’s policy on Syria, his party’s whipping system – plus, no doubt, his own de-selection

(or non-selection) by his allegedly ‘Orwellian’ constituency association, with interference

(denied) by Romford MP Andrew Rosindell.

The borough’s political arithmetic has always been complicated and today, with both a large, 19-

member Residents’ Group (RG) and a separate, and warring, 5-member Independent

Residents’ Group having gained seats, it is even more so – though Labour, comfortably the

largest party as recently as 2002, has somewhat simplified things by downsizing to a group of

one. There was talk before the elections of UKIP making great advances, and afterwards of the

Conservatives and the RG reprising the partnership they had for a time in the 1980s. But neither

eventuality materialised – UKIP failing to add to its seven councillors, and the RG opting to back

a Conservative minority administration, rather than join it.

Tower Hamlets continues electorally to be an exception to almost everything. Its final local

results were declared just the 119 hours after the polls closed and were accompanied by

numerous allegations of malpractice and intimidation. At present, with one ward left vacant

following the death of a candidate, Labour slightly outnumbers Mayor Lutfur Rahman’s Tower

Hamlets First party, but THF members will continue to hold all portfolios in the Mayor’s cabinet.

The Mayor himself was comfortably re-elected with a 3,250 majority over Labour’s John Biggs

on the second count, and on a nearly 46% turnout – over 6% higher than in any of the other four

mayoral contests. Again the declaration was immediately followed by allegations of unlawful or

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corrupt practice, and at the time of writing a High Court petition has been filed, naming both the

Mayor and the returning officer and seeking to have the election declared void.

Metropolitan boroughs

Labour went into these elections controlling 29 of the 32 metropolitan boroughs, and came out

controlling 30 – the latest addition being Bradford. As anticipated, particularly since last

October’s resignation of the five Galloway-following Respect members to sit as one of three

groups of Independents (did you hear that, Havering?), Labour regained an overall majority for

the first time since 2000, though only by the narrow margin of a 56-vote majority over the Lib

Dems in Bradford Moor.

The Bradford result reduced West Yorkshire’s long-term NOC trio to just Kirklees and

Calderdale. Arithmetically, Kirklees is the more resolutely hung of the two, and confirmed as

much this time, with not a single seat changing hands, including the five held by the Lib Dems.

Calderdale, though, was a very different story. Labour, in a kind of payback for its narrow

victory in Bradford, failed by just 17 Luddendenfoot votes to win its first overall majority this

century. Labour and the Conservatives gained four and two seats respectively, largely at the

expense of the Lib Dems, who lost five of the six they were attempting to defend. Labour

therefore stays in minority control, but in a stronger numerical position than earlier this year,

when it was forced to amend its budget following a lost vote to a Lib Dem-coordinated

opposition.

Moving across to Greater Manchester, in 2010, when Nick Clegg led his party into a national

coalition, the Lib Dems held 33 of Manchester City Council’s 96 seats. Today, following three

disastrous rounds of local elections, they have lost the lot – this time, all nine that they were

defending. In Tameside, for the third year running, the party failed to field a single candidate.

Local politics, however, are what it says on the tin – local – and in neighbouring Stockport the

Lib Dems remained comfortably the largest party, escaped with just one net loss, and even saw

their former leader, Dave Goddard, regain a seat in the Offerton ward in which he had lost in

2012 – albeit aided by the incumbent Lib Dem-turned-Tory member standing down. They will

continue, therefore, in minority control, but arithmetically slightly weakened. No longer can their

informal voting pact with the Heald Green Independent Ratepayers defeat the full joint forces of

Labour and the Conservatives, although the chances are the situation won’t arise.

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If, as an academic, you succumb to invitations to share with the media your supposed insights

into local politics, you obviously deserve whatever credit or embarrassment result from your

presumption. For me, this year’s (principal) mortification was Walsall.

Walsall was a Labour-dominated council right up to the turn of the century, but since then has

been predominantly Conservative. In recent years Labour has been close to regaining an

overall majority and in 2012 became the largest party, although in opposition to the

Conservative-Lib Dem coalition. This time it was one of Ed Miliband’s ‘must win’ authorities, and

I too thought that, particularly with the increased impact of UKIP (who have been fielding

candidates in Walsall for 14 years now), Labour would probably make it over the line. Rashly, I

suggested (not predicted!) as much in my pre-elections Briefing Paper (p.9).

That was Mistake No.1. The Conservatives (3) and Lib Dems (2) both lost seats and Labour

gained 2. But UKIP gained 3, leaving Labour with 30 of the council’s 60 seats. In the

circumstances, though, the Labour deputy leader, Sean Coughlan, felt confident enough to

announce on election night that “It puts us in a position where we can form an administration”.

Sadly, though, the reason it was he making the announcement was that the pancreatic cancer

with which the group leader, Tim Oliver, had long suffered was even more advanced than many

realised, and on the Saturday following the elections he died. He was a popular local figure and

a genuinely respected politician, and his death inevitably cast a long shadow over ensuing

events.

The basic arithmetic had obviously changed, and Conservative leader Mike Bird has a deserved

reputation as a persuasive negotiator, but the motley nature of the minority groups – 3 Lib

Dems, 3 UKIP, 2 Independents, 1 ex-Labour and ex-Democratic Labour – made it seem unlikely

that even he could get every one of them singing from the same proverbial hymn sheet.

Mistake No.2. At the AGM Pete Smith, the last-mentioned in the above list, was elected Mayor,

and Labour’s 29 votes for its motion to replace Mike Bird with Sean Coughlan as Leader of the

Council were matched by 29 against, so it failed. The Conservative/Lib Dem coalition and the

6/1composition of the cabinet remain intact and in control, although for how long, with a July by-

election pending, remains to be seen.

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Unitary authorities

In Bristol the Lib Dems are going through something of a Manchester experience but in slow

motion. In 2009 they won majority control for the first time, and on General Election day 2010

they strengthened it. Then came the fall-out, and the loss of 5 seats in 2011, 10 in 2012, and a

further 7 this year – variously to Labour (3), the Greens (2), UKIP and the Conservatives (1

apiece). Mayor George Ferguson’s 6-member cabinet, though, is more rainbow than rigorously

proportional, and, while Victor d’Hondt might squirm in his grave, the Lib Dems retain their two

seats, along with Labour, with the Conservatives and Greens having one each.

Milton Keynes is one of those quite rare authorities to have been run in the relatively recent

past by all three major parties: first Labour, then the Lib Dems, and in the last years of the ‘old’

council by a minority Conservative administration. Numbers on that outgoing council were

Conservatives 19, Labour 16, Lib Dems 15, UKIP 1. On the enlarged 57-member council

Labour achieved its best result since the 1990s, and it was quickly accepted that it would take

minority control, the new council leader, Peter Marland, appointing what he suggests is one of

the youngest cabinets in the country.

Last May UKIP won 11 seats on Lincolnshire County Council and nearly became the official

opposition. This year, in Labour-controlled N E Lincolnshire, it was again the chief mover and

shaker, taking seats from both Labour (4) and the Conservatives (1) and depriving the former of

its overall majority. With exactly half the council seats, its minority control was not seriously in

question (unlike in Walsall), and prompted probably fewer headlines than the projection that, if

UKIP achieved the same ward-by-ward results next year, it would win the Great Grimsby

parliamentary seat that longstanding Labour MP, Austin Mitchell, had recently announced he

would not be defending.

Cambridgeshire had been an even more productive UKIP hunting ground, and this year the

party made its presence felt in Peterborough, chiefly at the Conservatives’ expense. It

unseated three of their councillors, ending the overall control they had held since 2002. Their

leader for the past five years has been the entrepreneurial Marco Cereste, whose high profile

(allegedly ‘vanity’) projects – a huge new renewable energy park, a transformed city centre,

fountains in Cathedral Square, a Gigabit City – alongside cuts in more mundane services like

children’s centres have earned both positive and negative publicity – plus, from the city’s

(Conservative) MP, Stewart Jackson, a comparison with the Supreme Leader of North Korea,

Kim Jong-un. Re-elected unopposed as group leader, Cereste made it clear he was not

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interested in pacts or alliances, and he easily survived an Independent bid at the AGM to

remove him. Peterborians, though, seem to have something of a fixation about power, for, no

sooner had he been elected than the new Mayor decided to introduce a rule limiting all

speeches to five minutes, and promptly invoked it to silence Celeste while in the middle of

naming the members of his cabinet. The proposer of a motion on the council’s constitution was

rather snappier, and allowed enough time for all political groups to agree that a working party be

set up to consider a move to a committee system.

In Portsmouth too UKIP was the main agent in overthrowing an established majority

administration, in this case the Lib Dems. In 2012 they not only survived but increased their

majority. Not this time: they lost five seats to UKIP – including that of Portsmouth South MP,

Mike Hancock – their overall control, and subsequently, through resignation, their leader, Gerald

Vernon Jackson. They remained easily the largest group, but in the ensuing inter-party

discussions the other parties made most of the running. The Conservative leader, Donna Jones,

admitted she favoured a coalition with Labour, but Labour, though more inclined to do business

with the Conservatives than with the Lib Dems, was set against coalitions, as was UKIP. Both

parties, however, agreed to back a Conservative ultra-minority administration – though exactly

what that backing covers and whether it extends, for instance, to the budget, seems at present

unclear.

UKIP’s successes across South Essex will be a recurring theme in the remainder of this

Briefing, starting with Southend-on-Sea BC. The town has had a generally majority

Conservative council since 2000, but by 2012 that majority had become knife-edge and had

twice had to be regained, first through a defection from the Independent group and more

recently through a narrow by-election victory over the Lib Dems. These elections saw it

disappear decisively. 11 of the 17 contested seats changed hands, with UKIP (5) and Labour (3)

the gainers, and the Conservatives (7) and Lib Dems (4) the losers.

The neatest arithmetic may have suggested a Conservative/Independent coalition, but there

were several obstacles – including personality clashes and an alleged, though denied,

Independent-UKIP electoral non-aggression pact. In the event, although the Conservatives were

still much the largest party, most serious discussion focused on an anti-Conservative, non-UKIP

coalition. What materialised was an annually renewable Independent/Labour/Lib Dem

‘confidence and supply’ agreement, brokered and led by the Independent, Ron Woodward, and

resting on the narrowest of overall majorities. Unusually for such arrangements, this Joint

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Administration Agreement has a published and downloadable document underpinning it11 –

including broad aims, allocation of cabinet posts (3 Independents, 3 Labour, I Lib Dem), a set of

specific policy commitments (several reversing controversial Conservative policies), and a

pledge that the council should be able to consider “further constitutional change, including the

cabinet and committee systems” – the last of which at least should appeal to the UKIP

members, excluded from the Agreement, but the cause of its very existence.

Of the four councils Labour lost to NOC – Great Yarmouth, N E Lincolnshire, Thurrock, Tower

Hamlets – it was probably Thurrock which brought it the most media grief. In 2010 Labour had

ended six years of Conservative rule. In 2011 it became the largest party, and in 2012 took

majority control – evidence, claimed Ed Miliband, that the Opposition was “winning back trust,

gaining ground”. Unfortunately, by the time he paid his recent post-election visit to what is also

Labour’s No.2 parliamentary target seat, the ground had been occupied by UKIP, who took

seats also from the Conservatives (3) and Labour (2), deprived Labour of its majority, and

grabbed the balance of power.

Early post-election talk was of an unspecified ‘grand coalition’ between Labour and the

Conservatives, and an ‘insider’ confided to the Thurrock Gazette that s/he would “lay my

money” on such an outcome – but then rather quickly disappeared. Back in the real world, with

the Conservatives ruling out any pact with UKIP, a Labour minority administration came to look

most likely - though if at the AGM the 6 UKIP members had voted with the Conservatives and

the 2 Independents, they could, if they’d wanted, have secured a Conservative Mayor and

probably a sharing of committee chairs. They chose, however, to abstain on almost all key

votes, with the result that Labour members now hold all the posts they would have had with an

overall majority: Mayor, Deputy Mayor, plus overview and scrutiny chairs and the chairs of

licensing and planning.

11 Southend-on-Sea Borough Council, Jojnt Administration Agreement (June 2014) - http://www.southend.gov.uk/downloads/file/2702/joint_administration_agreement_on_behalf_of_the_independents_labour_and_liberal_democrat_groups.

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Non-metropolitan districts

Staying in South Essex, immediately north-east of Thurrock is Basildon BC, setting for another

of UKIP’s epic entrées into the world of local government. The Conservatives had run the

council since 2002, had seen the UKIP challenge grow, and had seen it off. This year UKIP

again fought all 15 seats, won 11 of them – 7 from the Conservatives, including that of their

leader, Tony Ball – and propelled itself immediately into the status of the council’s official

opposition. Or so it was thought, the general assumption being that the Conservatives would

form a minority administration. UKIP members were quoted as rejecting any coalition with the

Conservatives – “if we’d wanted to do that, we’d have stood as Conservatives”; “we’d prefer to

become the official opposition; we’ve got to learn to crawl before we can run”.

Then came the AGM – and confirmation that rumours of at least an agreement between the two

parties were well-founded. Basildon, unusually, has an apparently permanent Mayor –

Conservative Cllr Mo Larkin holding the post since Basildon achieved Borough status in 2010.

She was re-elected for a fifth term through a joint Conservative-UKIP vote, and a UKIP member

was elected Deputy Mayor, unopposed by the Conservatives. Cllr Phil Turner, Tony Ball’s

former deputy, was then elected as Council Leader, and proceeded to announce the

Conservative members of what is a slightly smaller cabinet, following the amalgamation of

certain portfolios. Following recent custom, two cabinet seats without portfolio were then offered

to the two main opposition groups, but, with Labour again declining theirs, both went to UKIP

members – and likewise, later in the meeting, the chair and vice-chair of the non-executive Audit

and Risk Committee.

Now here’s the thing. Labour claims these five posts constitute nearly half of the UKIP group

and give it same proportion of the council’s special responsibility places as the Lib Dems have

in the national Coalition. Even without direct responsibility for any council departments, the two

cabinet members will vote on key decisions and could even hold the balance of power if there

were a policy disagreement among the Conservative members. The arrangement, argues

Labour, should be acknowledged as the Conservative/UKIP coalition it actually is. Cllr Turner,

however, claims he leads a Conservative minority administration and that for it to be a coalition

the parties would have had formally to agree policies and strategies, which they haven’t.

Remind me, how is it the duck test goes: if it looks like a coalition, quacks like a coalition ...?

17

The Conservatives had actually surrendered their majority control over Basingstoke and

Deane BC within months of the 2012 elections, one councillor resigning the party whip following

a High Court ruling that the Council had mishandled a land development case, and another

defecting to become UKIP’s candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner. In these elections

they lost a further seat to Labour, but, with UKIP making only one gain – by a candidate who

might or might not at the time have been suspended by the party for making seriously offensive

comments on Facebook – their continuing in office as a minority administration was never in

serious doubt.

Brentwood BC is immediately north of Thurrock, west of Basildon, and just up the Thames

Estuary from Southend and Castle Point. Geographically it may have seemed promising UKIP

territory, but Communities Secretary Eric Pickles’ principal local authority proved the South

Essex exception. Interesting things happened alright, but neither involving nor even catalysed

by UKIP. The party contested 9 of the 13 wards and achieved several second places, but the

Conservatives’ losses that ended their 10-year majority rule were to the Lib Dems (2) and

Labour (1). The Conservatives were still easily the largest party, but the others, aided perhaps

by not having to decide whether or not to do business with a bunch of UKIP newcomers, got

their act together quickly and within 48 hours had signed the ‘Brentwood Accord’ – a joint bid by

the Lib Dems, Brentwood First, Labour, and the single Independent to form a joint

administration.

As in Southend, the Accord Agreement was published online, but this was a much shorter and

less explicit document – clarifying that the four political groups would remain as ‘separate

entities’, but with no details, at this stage, of the shape of the administration or its policies12.

These soon started to emerge, though, in almost a torrent, starting with a 7.43 am posting from

the Lib Dems13, followed by the Accord’s own blog14.

To begin with, there will be a new committee structure, “returning to a model of [8] focused and

specialist committees” – their chairs split 5-3 between the Lib Dems and Brentwood First. Lib

Dem leader, Barry Aspinell, is council leader and chair of Finance & Resources; William Lloyd

(Brentwood First) is Deputy Leader and chair of the Environment committee; Roger Keeble, the

12 http://brentwoodaccord.co.uk/theaccordagreement.html. 13 http://brentwoodlibdems.org.uk/en/article/2014/850088/brentwood-accord-takes-control-tories-now-the-opposition-party. 14 http://brentwoodaccord.co.uk/blog/.

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single Independent, is Deputy Mayor; and Labour’s one key position is the vice-chair of

Overview & Scrutiny. Policies include undertaking a comprehensive audit of the whole council;

proposing a revised budget within 100 days; building more council housing; moving towards

whole-council elections; and bridging “the disconnect between officers, staff and members” –

through, inter alia, “insisting that the staff call us by our first names” – an announcement signed

aptly by “Barry, William, Mike [Le-Surf, Labour group leader] and Roger”.

Still in South Essex, Castle Point BC had since 2003 been run by the Conservatives, who had

been led throughout that time by Pam Challis. UKIP brought both to an abrupt end, taking five

seats from the Conservatives, including that of their leader – a better result perhaps even than it

sounds, given UKIP’s informal electoral pact with the Canvey Island Independents (CIIP) and its

agreement to contest only the 8 (of 14) ‘mainland’ wards. This may not have helped early post-

election discussions about a possible three-party coalition, but the numbers alone militated

against it: as coalition theorists will immediately note, a majority simply didn’t require three

parties. With CIIP also piqued by the Conservatives’ election of a twice-suspended councillor as

their deputy leader, the increasingly likely outcome was a Conservative minority administration

under their new leader, Colin Riley. CIIP and UKIP have announced that they are carrying

forward their strictly informal pact into a shadow cabinet.

When I was growing up in Leigh-on-Sea, reaching North Essex involved crossing the River

Crouch and to my carless parents and me was cognitively as distant as Kent, if not France.

Politically it’s still a different world from South Essex, as UKIP will testify.

The Lib Dems have been the largest party on Colchester BC for most of the past quarter-

century, and since 2008 have headed a Lib Dem/Labour/Independent coalition. This time,

although the Greens contested all 20 seats and UKIP 13, neither managed to win a seat, the

only movement being one Labour gain from the Lib Dems. There was, though, a further minor

change a few days later with a Lib Dem defection, on personal rather than policy grounds, to the

previously one-family Highwoods Independents. Gerard, Beverley and son Philip Oxford are

now, therefore, the Highwoods and Stanway Independent Group, but otherwise the coalition

rolls on for a seventh year, with a cabinet comprising 5 Lib Dems, 1 Labour and 1 Independent

member (Beverley).

Apart from a brief period of Labour control in the late 1990s, the Conservatives have generally

been the dominant party on Gloucester City Council. This time they were pleased to maintain

19

their vote share, see off UKIP, and, with no seat changes at all, to continue for a third year their

minority administration.

In 2012 it was the Conservatives on Great Yarmouth BC who had been the chief victims of

UKIP’s intervention, which contributed substantially to their loss of four seats to Labour and with

them, after 12 years, overall control of the council. For them, May 22, 2014 was Groundhog

Day, but now they were joined by Labour, both parties losing 5 seats to UKIP, leaving the

council comprehensively split three ways. There seemed no great enthusiasm for a coalition,

Labour being completely opposed and thereby increasing the prospects of its eventually forming

a minority administration. UKIP’s new leader, Kay Grey, said her party was prepared to listen to

offers, although the unlikelihood of these being forthcoming was shown when UKIP nominees to

several outside bodies were overlooked in an apparent share-out between the two main parties.

The political history of the ‘old’ 35-member Hart DC was of short periods of Conservative

majority control punctuating longer periods of various forms of minority party administration.

Even pre-UKIP, the steady growth of the Community Campaign Hart (CCH) reduced the

prospects of the first elections to the new 33-member council producing a decisive result, and

so it proved. UKIP’s 15% vote share didn’t win seats, but contributed to the former Conservative

minority administration losing theirs to both CCH (3) and in the village of Hook to an

Independent – the latter being one of several campaigns in these elections fought largely on the

issue of a controversial planned housing development. There had been talk after the 2012

elections of a three-party administration and this time it happened: a limited-spectrum rainbow

coalition between the Conservatives, Lib Dems and CCH, with cabinet seats shared 3-2-2.

For 25 years until 2008, no single party on Maidstone BC held an overall majority, and for a

time it was a genuinely three-party council. Since 2008, though, it had been in Conservative

hands until another UKIP intervention took 4 of their 20 seats and ended their overall control.

Council leader throughout that period was Chris Garland, whose first reaction to the results,

before stepping down from the party leadership, was that “now we will look to work in coalition

with another group” – a prospect that some felt might increase with the election as his

successor of Annabelle Blackmore, who had not been a leading cabinet member and was less

identified than Garland and colleagues with the controversial draft local plan. The reasoning

proved groundless, but Blackmore’s election did get reaction – a personally piqued colleague

resigning not just from the party but from the whole council, on learning that there would not be

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a leading place for him in her new minority administration. “I decided if I wasn’t going to be able

to contribute, I should resign”, he explained, and the by-election is pending.

Over the years, Mole Valley DC has tended to be the exception to the local elections night

axiom that: ‘Surrey is mostly boringly Conservative’. The Conservatives did have a four-year

period of majority control from 2006, but in 2010 went into coalition with the Ashtead

Independents – an arrangement that survived a Lib Dem by-election victory which made them

the largest party. In 2012 the Lib Dems reinforced this position, even after the defection of a

councillor “annoyed with Nick Clegg who has ignored two e-mails from me concerning closing

the tax avoidance loopholes”. They were outflanked, though, by the Conservatives and

Independents electing an Independent Chairman of the Council, who ended up selecting an

Executive of 3 Conservatives and 3 Ashtead Independents. Recalling the ‘Five Days in May’

reference in this Briefing’s opening paragraph, it’s worth noting that this Executive-selection

process took over two months – mostly spent, to the credit of the Chairman’s integrity if not his

decisiveness, failing to persuade the aggrieved Lib Dems to accept his offer of a tripartite

coalition.

Given that recent history, it is unsurprising that, with the Conservatives gaining two seats and

becoming once more the largest party, the Independent-led coalition continues – essentially

unchanged except for the addition of an extra Conservative to the Executive. Mole Valley,

incidentally, is one of the thankfully few authorities that still treat councillors’ party identifications

as if they were Official Secrets, refusing to divulge them until you go to their individual contact

details. The same is true for all committee memberships, including the Executive – the only

compensation being that, in going through this laborious process, you do pick up odd titbits of

news – like the council’s Wellbeing portfolio being reassuringly in the hands of one James

Friend.

Pendle DC’s largest-party hat has changed heads four times over the past 20 years: Lab-LD-

Lab-LD-Con. But in two of the years there was no largest party, most recently following the

2012 elections, when Conservatives and Labour held 18 seats each. Labour wasn’t able to do a

deal with the Lib Dems, but the Conservatives could. It was not, both parties insisted, a

coalition, but a ‘shared executive’ of 6 Conservatives and 4 Lib Dems, and, outside a list of 11

agreed objectives, the two parties retained the right to promote their own policies. With this

year’s elections producing a net change of only one seat – from the Lib Dems to Labour – this

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shared executive arrangement will continue unchanged, backed now by a published 12-point

plan15.

Purbeck DC has its local government excitements, but they come mostly between, rather than

at, elections. Last May, for example, there were no district elections, but the council’s single

Independent, Peter Wharf, decided to join the Conservatives, thereby transforming their minority

administration into a controlling majority. Then, in a council meeting last November, there was

the odd spectacle of Conservative council leader, Gary Suttle, calling successfully for all

members, including the Lib Dem opposition, to vote down his own proposal that Purbeck enter a

shared services partnership with the already merging East Dorset and Christchurch councils.

The business case, it seemed, had found that the savings would not be on quite the scale he

had fondly, or ideologically, hoped and the time had come to stop digging in this particular hole.

It was certainly unusual, but perhaps also prescient. Assisted by a substantial UKIP

intervention, the Lib Dems in this May’s elections – the last before Purbeck switches to whole-

council elections – took a ward from the Conservatives, so that Purbeck, unlike East Dorset and

Christchurch, is no longer under Conservative majority control, which would surely have made a

merger even more tricky. Cllr Suttle still leads his again minority administration, whose 6-

member Policy Group now accommodates the also prescient Cllr Wharf.

The recent political history of, to use its official name, St Albans City and District Council is of

the Lib Dems having majority control for a period, losing it, regaining it, losing it again, and so

on. They’re now, unsurprisingly, in a losing phase, with the Conservatives having held minority

control since 2011, but being stuck on 29 of the council’s 58 seats. They’re still stuck – another

case, surely, for councils having odd numbers of seats – but, with the Lib Dems losing a further

three seats to Labour and now reduced to 17, their minority control is that bit more secure.

The Conservatives ran Stroud DC for 10 years, until in 2012 they lost 5 wards straight to

Labour and, with just 21 of the 52 council seats, were left well short of a majority. The other

parties had little interest in a coalition with the defeated Conservatives, and also wanted to

change the whole way the council worked – back to a committee system that would give

members more involvement in the decision-making process. The initial working agreement

between Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens was immediately labelled, like almost all multi-party

15 http://www.pendle.gov.uk/news/article/2031/shared_executive_to_run_pendle_council.

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power-sharing arrangements, a rainbow coalition, but their own preferred ‘Alliance’ was more

appropriate. During the transition back to a full committee system, the cabinet was replaced by

an 8-member executive and cabinet members by ‘policy leaders’ (on reduced Special

Responsibility Allowances) – the first cabinet comprising 4 Labour members, 2 Lib Dems and

1Green.

The main changes in this year’s elections took place among the Alliance parties – Labour (3)

and the Greens (1) making net gains and the Lib Dems 2 net losses. The structural transition

over, the key committee is Strategy and Resources, chaired by the Labour council leader,

Geoffrey Wheeler, and with proportional membership: 5 Labour, 5 Conservatives, 2 Lib Dems

and 1 Green. Four of the six main standing committees are chaired by Labour, one

(Environment) by a Green member, and Audit & Standards by an independent Conservative.

West Lancashire BC is a predominantly Conservative, overwhelmingly two-party council, on

which the Conservatives had majority control from 2002 until this May, when the loss of a single

seat to Labour left the two parties with 27 seats each. As noted on p.4 above, the council

provided a clear and timely explanation of the implications of this situation and anticipated that

the probable outcome would be a Conservative minority administration – and happily, come the

AGM, that is exactly what happened16.

Weymouth and Portland BC road-tested single-party majority government for a brief period in

the 1970s but evidently decided it wasn’t for them, as their unwavering election results ever

since have been NOC. At different times all three main parties have been the largest, but none

have managed to reach 19 of the 36 seats. Thanks partly to defections, the Conservatives

made it to 18 a few years ago, but they’ve slipped away and in this year’s elections Labour took

two seats from them and another from the Independents, making them the largest party. The Lib

Dem Mayor also lost his seat, to the council’s first UKIP member, one Francis Drake – although,

possibly to Nigel Farage’s relief, this one is a local café owner, rather than pirate and slave-

trader. Labour’s largest-party status gets them the chair of the key Management Committee,

comprising 10 members from all parties – 4 Labour, 3 Conservatives, 2 Lib Dems, I UKIP – and

the other committee chairs will continue to be shared across the parties.

16 http://www.westlancsdc.gov.uk/news/new-mayor-of-west-lancashire-and-new-leader-of-the-council-are-announced.aspx.

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Winchester City Council, for most of the 8-year post-Mark Oaten period, has been

Conservative-dominated, and following the 2012 elections the party was able to take overall

control. Its majority disappeared, though, several months before this year’s elections, with the

defection of two Conservative members to the Lib Dems, putting the two parties back where

they had been before 2012, on 27 seats each. But when a city’s main mention on election night

comes from a local parliamentary candidate calling for her leader’s resignation, it’s a fair guess

that that party hasn’t done terribly well. That certainly was Lib Dem candidate Jackie Porter’s

view of her party’s two lost seats, which restored the Conservatives’ position as the largest party

and more or less ensured a continuation of their minority administration.

Last May, as I’ve described briefly elsewhere17, Worcester City Council, who weren’t holding

elections, provided probably more political excitement than the County Council, who were. In

brief, an instant coalition of the 15 Labour members, the single Green, and 2 Lib Dems who until

then had been backing the Conservative minority administration, staged a dramatic and

successful power-grab. A few months later, by way of rubbing salt into the wound, Conservative

councillor, Jabba Riaz, suddenly – they like surprises in Worcester – announced he was joining

Labour: possibly because of his distress over the local impact of “David Cameron’s disastrous

policies”, but possibly also because of his failure the previous week to get selected for a safer

Conservative ward than his own.

In roughly the words of another cliché, though, if you come to power by the sword, you die by

the sword – and so it proved for Labour. It retained all its now 16 seats – Riaz quite comfortably

holding his marginal ward for Labour – but, with the Conservatives taking one from the Lib

Dems, they became again the largest party. The remaining Lib Dem and the Green were the

proverbial kingmakers, the latter especially making no secret of his being open to offers. But

then, two days before the council’s AGM – and a few days after losing his party’s nomination as

Deputy Mayor to none other than Cllr Riaz – Labour councillor Alan Amos announced his

resignation from the party, apparently out of frustration at not being more involved in its

leadership. The arithmetic was now nailbiting: the then unknown direction of Amos’ vote would

be decisive.

Seven minutes into the AGM, all was suddenly clear – as the Conservatives’ nominee for Mayor

proved to be, certainly to Labour’s surprise, Alan Amos. He was, of course, elected; Riaz lost

17 Chris Game, ‘Who’ll work with the Lib Dems?’ - http://inlogov.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/wholl-work-with-the-lib-dems/.

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out; a ‘no confidence’ motion in the Labour council leader, Adrian Gregson, was debated and

passed, and Conservative leader, Simon Geraghty, elected in his place – all by votes of 18 to

17. Worcester has, once more, a Conservative minority administration, led by the man with

already seven years’ experience in the role. Meanwhile, there is a public petition circulating

calling for the Mayor to resign, and the Mayor’s Chaplain – the fellow who says the prayers at

the start of council meetings – has warned, presumably Worcester’s councillors, that the public

"no longer regards public sparring as a sign of maturity, but looks for integrity and honesty in

public life." Absolutely – though you have to admit, the public sparring stuff can be entertaining.

Just up the M5, the Conservatives had lost their overall control of Wyre Forest DC in 2012 at

the same time as their colleagues in Worcester were losing theirs. In both authorities they

remained the largest party and formed minority administrations, the main difference being that

Wyre Forest’s minority parties, groups and sects are a more diverse and less unifiable bunch

than Worcester’s. It means ward elections have at least 4 and often 6 or 7 candidates, with

plenty of gains and losses. This time the Conservatives (3) and Independent Community &

Health Concern (the former Kidderminster Hospital campaigners) (2) were the main losers, and

UKIP (5) by far the biggest winners. The Conservatives, however, remain easily the largest

single party and will continue to run the council as a minority administration.

_________________________