The Scottish government has embarked on a new round of cartography, redrawing the country’s administrative maps.

Fourteen health boards will become two. Quangos will be merged. But perhaps most significantly, the government has floated replacing Scotland’s 32 unitary local authorities with a return to two-level local government: 120-160 community authorities would sit within six to 10 regional authorities, alongside bespoke arrangements for islands.

These proposals were not set out before the election. Yet the government now wants to reach agreement with other parties and local government within three months.

This abruptness has left many feeling blindsided, a complaint intensified by the lack of detail in the proposals. As many have noted, the government appears to have started with a structure while leaving fundamental questions of powers, funding, local taxation and democratic participation on the to-do pile.

Why lack of detail raises big questions over merger

While deferral of those issues makes the proposals hard to judge, it is true that the structures of Scotland’s local government have long been criticised. It has long been argued that councils are the wrong size and shape.

Highland Council covers a larger area than Wales and is 160 times the size of Clackmannanshire. It is difficult to see a logic to the convoluted borders Glasgow City Council has with its neighbours. The government’s line that “some councils are too large to be local and others too small to be strategic” rings true to many ears, not least because it appeals both to people who want more localism and those who want a stronger regional layer.

In the latter camp sit some (not all) economists, who see maps in terms of “functional economic areas” often corresponding to commuter regions.

The theory is that better........

© Herald Scotland