Why is Buckinghamshire Council so enormous?

Question

Buckinghamshire Council has 147 seats. This is a huge number, which is more than the Scottish Parliament (129), the Israeli Knesset (120), and the Parliament of New Zealand (also 120), or the entire state of California (80 in Assembly, 40 in Senate).

Even just in local government, London, with enormously more people, has a London Assembly of just 25 seats. New York City council has just 51.

So, why on earth would a county council have 147 seats, and how does it function at such a large size for a relatively small population (~500k)?

Answer 1

Buckinghamshire is now governed as a unitary authority rather than a county council, with a single council controlling all local government functions. This is contrast to (e.g.) London, which consists of 32 boroughs and the City of London, each of which has their own councils dealing with many functions (e.g. rubbish collection, registry offices, setting council tax rates, etc.) as well as the Greater London Authority (which is primarily an executive run by the London Mayor, with the assembly a check on his or her powers and doesn't really "do" much). As such, the "standard" English local government system of 2 to 3 councillors per ward (an electoral unit of about 5,500 people) creates a large body when aggregated across the council. For comparison 1,833 councillors were elected to the 32 London boroughs in the 2018 London local elections.

As to how it functions, the area is a relatively homogenous area in which the population is either rural or commutes to London for work. Except for a few bastions of Liberal Democrat support there wouldn't be expected to be a great divergence of opinion, except at a very local level.

Answer 2

I don't know what arguments were actually made in Buckinghamshire, but if I were charged with making the case against reducing councillor numbers, I'd make the following three points:

• Buckinghamshire Council has ten executive jobs for councillors. The councillors holding those executive jobs are bound by collective cabinet responsibility, meaning that they're not at all free to vote with their consciences (or their perception of the interests of their constituents), they always have to vote with the leadership (or resign from their executive jobs). As things stand, this "payroll vote" makes up only 7% of the Council, and is therefore relatively harmless. If the total number of councillors were reduced to, say, 40, the number of executive jobs would still be 10, and the payroll vote would be 25% of the entire Council, seriously skewing Council democracy. This issue doesn't arise in the London Assembly, because the executive there is separate from the Assembly.
• Councillors (at least the more conscientious and better-informed ones), given that their allowances are not covered by minimum wage legislation, can be a very cheap [*] and effective way of fielding incoming enquiries from the public. If the number of councillors were reduced, the Council may find itself having to pay more for extra first- and second-line helpline workers than it saved by removing the councillors.
• Councils in England are elected by a first past the post system. Having fewer, larger wards accentuates the "winner takes all" nature of the first past the post system. In Buckinghamshire in particular, there's a risk that even a slight reduction in the number of councillors and wards might result in one party winning all the seats, leading to a lack of effective accountability and challenge to the leadership.

[*] Some are cheaper than others. The councillors with the executive jobs are generally paid bigger allowances than non-executive councillors; and Buckinghamshire in particular appears to have a rather unusual setup whereby Conservative non-executive councillors are paid bigger allowances than non-Conservative non-executive councillors. But even a Conservative non-executive councillor in Buckinghamshire is paid less than 20% of the salary of a non-executive London Assembly member.