“I tend to do things because they intrigue me”

What Steven asked Stuart Tranter, former councillor for Rochester West and local businessman

Following the 2023 local elections, Steven sat down for tea and a chat with former Rochester West councillor Stuart Tranter to get his thoughts and insights on what happened to the local Conservatives and his own seat. They ended up having an interesting conversation about the future of local government and ‘super-unitaries,’ but being the poor journalist that he is, Steven did not record or report on this conversation. So, Steven met with Stuart again to hear about his thoughts on the future of local government. Again, being a poor journalist, Stuart had started talking before Steven started recording…

Stuart Tranter

Go back a minute and go again. What you were saying with super unitaries…
With rethinking the local authority model. All I'm going to say is not political, by the way. This is completely non-political because I actually come from a fairly non-political, some would say centrist, I suppose that means an average place to be on some issues. I tend to be fairly left-wing in thinking and, on other issues, very right-wing. I joined the Conservatives and so on. But I am still who I am. I can get things wrong as much as anybody. But I genuinely, like most people in this game, care about my local area, and I genuinely want it to do well, and I want people to do well, both individually and collectively. That sounds corny, but that's actually how it is for me and most other politicians. I came into this not from any particular political style. I live in Rochester, so this is my little patch if you like. I started from wondering, could I see the potential for Rochester? But my business mind, looks at potential for businesses and could we be doing better than we are? What are the problems? What are the opportunities and so forth? I started to think about that for Rochester. Eventually, due to a whole bunch of circumstances, I ended up joining a party and being elected because I thought, since I was struggling to get the local authorities to do something, if you can't beat them, join them. Let's see if I can. I have achieved a little bit more there, which hopefully, that's what anyone joins to do, to try and make some progress in different areas.
When I go back in time throughout my life, I realise, like most people, and probably unlike you Steven, I think you're exceptional, most people do not really understand how our local authority works, how it functions. A lot of people will know the basics, the obvious services that they enjoy. They are certainly less likely to understand the finances. In fact, they'll pay a local tax, but they won't realise that that's not the only money the council gets. Again, I don't know how much people are expected to understand about these things, but it would be fairly vague.
Only those people that are benefiting from social services will understand that the local authorities are very much involved in that side of things. But then you've got three layers of local authority, up to three layers, the parish level, the district level and of course the county level, and then you have this amazing unitary type of thing which… Well, it takes two out of the three. It doesn't encompass the parish level. I can see people are confused, but also, I wanted to look at it from the other side the perspective. If you're in government and no government in history has ever had enough money to do everything they want to do, why would they look at a local authority as wise use of their money? Might look at it as a necessity, an organisation which is dealing with local matters such as planning and roads and so on and so forth, but someone's got to do it, and they're getting on with it and making it happen. The other big area of opportunity for a local authority I've always felt is economic growth, and that's usually pretty high up the agenda of any sensible government. Certainly, the Labour government are proclaiming that at the moment and of course, the Conservatives have always proclaimed that as well and rightly so, because unless you're making money as a country and earning a great deal of money, then you don't have the money to do all the other things, the health services and everything else that everybody craves for and wants and believes are important. And, of course, we might add to that list now defence, which is very much a topic of conversation.
If you're hard pushed looking at where you spend your money, successive governments have always been a bit unsure about local government. Why is that? Well, having now spent 10 years on the inside of that, and I don't mean this to demean the strengths of colleagues of any political party locally, you could take 59 people off the streets of Medway at random and make them councillors. Because when I met various councillors during that time, I met some people that were very bright for all parties, I got on very well with, I liked a lot, others you look at them, and I don't mean to be unkind, but I thought, ‘Well, what are you doing here? Do you even know what's going on around you? Do you understand?’ I struggled, and not to say they're a bad person, and of course, within that mix, there'd be some, are they there for selfish reasons? On the whole, I don't think councillors are, in my experience. I think they're generally quite good. I concluded, and it was a very objective conclusion, the standard of thinking is not very high in this place, if I could put it like that.
When I look at officers they have to manage within the law. People forget how constrained officers are, and I mean from the very top down. They have to ensure that local authorities run properly, effectively, that it does produce a balanced budget, which it's legally required to do. From my background, I've met people who have the most amazing economic development minds, having worked both as a consultant and senior manager in businesses, dealing with those issues. I didn't very often spot that in the local authority. People that think in that way tend not to, on the whole, choose a career in local authorities. That's not to, again, run down anyone who's chosen that career because I think it's a great place to work, and we need people there. They’re not necessarily the entrepreneurial minds. There will be exceptions, but on the whole, the blob, if you like, is not in that place. So when you see that in the extremes, where you see planners trying to deal with developers, they're like the two extremes, developers are people who often put their own money in, or they're under huge pressures to make something a success and planners are geared up rightly to follow a set of rules, and I could see that never the twain shall meet. Very rarely is there a meeting of minds. There's an uneasy truce that goes on, and they somehow try to make things work and these frustrations arise. The whole system isn't geared up.
Surely, we need to get better people in there. We need to rethink the way it works because I believe if government looked at a local authority, in fact, these are the people that understand the economic opportunities in that area because they know the skills of the people, they know the transport systems better than anyone else, they all know what businesses currently do well here, what historically have done well, they'll know their educational systems, they should be able to pull those things together to really leverage the advantages of an area. But that requires a deeper level of thinking than just plucking someone off the streets and then putting them in charge.

What did you think of the plans for devolution?
I think it's better than the current system because it's a simplification. My worry would be that we're still left with a whole large bunch of councillors. A lot of things councillors do, frankly, a good officer could do. It didn't require an elected person to be doing some of these things or to help somebody with a personal issue. Then we've got one person at the top who has a super brain approach to the strategy for the area, and they have to deal with this huge organisation, much bigger than it is even now. Medway was frankly big enough for anyone to deal with, for the leader of the council to deal with the complexities of Medway or the chief exec. I take my hat off to them. There is a lot to think about, huge numbers of pressures, and it isn't easy. To my mind, I would rather have far fewer councillors but ensure that they were paid in a way that was commensurate with the job and probably closer to an MP remuneration. I'm not saying it needs to be that. I'm perfectly open to discuss what would be appropriate. If you're spending 40 hours a week doing it, either you're very rich and you don't need the money or... I just don't understand how people can really give it the attention it needs.
Have people with a track record of economic development maybe social services, maybe health, the big areas, that are needed and have a far smaller number of councillors. Which might equate roughly to a board. More like a directly elected cabinet. Now, I'm not pretending this is thought through in detail. I'm not saying there aren't problems with it. It's still equally democratic because voters can throw people out if they don't deliver. If we had a cabinet of real high calibre people, they'd need to be earning a liveable wage if they've got a family, and they could be out in their ear in four or five years’ time. During that period, they've got to be able to sustain themselves. They've got to give all of their time and energy to that job. They will be there, somebody having real expertise in their field, expectations will be higher, hopefully, working with an elected mayor, they will be able to focus on the true economic value of an area and also the services and the issues that it faces as well so that you can maximise the opportunities for an area.

Having spent time on a number of elections, can the electorate be trusted in a democratic way to vote for the best person for the job?
Well, we'd be selecting fewer people. All parties struggle to find good candidates. All parties will say our candidate is the best one. Of course, they're going to say that, aren't they? But I know behind the scenes, it's really hard. If a party I'm not a member of is saying, ‘We had loads to choose from,’ I'd be even more worried. Really? You chose these? Or at least some of them. Some are good, don't get me wrong. It's the randomness of 59 people. There will be a few highfliers in there.
Can the public be trusted?
That is democracy. We have to do our job. We can think of ten really good people, I hope. Often when somebody criticises me, which happens, I would say, ‘Well, the problem is that you didn't stand, I did. We couldn't choose you, you're obviously better than me.’ Of course people don't stand for a whole bunch of personal and other reasons, but hopefully, more people would come forward, and it becomes a virtuous circle.