Schedule 3 – Payments and Pensions: Minor and consequential amendments Part 9 – Collaboration and Amalgamation Section 162 – Power to make an amalgamation order
188.Enables Welsh Ministers by order to amalgamate two or three (and no more) local authorities to create a single new local government area.
189.Before making an amalgamation order, the Welsh Ministers must be satisfied that effective local government is not likely to be achieved in at least one of the local government areas to be amalgamated.
190.In reaching their conclusion that amalgamation is necessary, the Welsh Ministers must consider whether effective local government could be achieved in the local authorities concerned by the exercise of the powers already conferred on those authorities and on the Welsh Ministers under specified provisions in the 2009 Measure.
191.The Welsh Ministers must therefore be satisfied that exercise of the following powers is unlikely to achieve effective local government:
192.The Welsh Ministers will have to demonstrate that they are satisfied that exercise of the above powers is unlikely to achieve effective local government, and that an amalgamation would be likely to do so. Therefore, having first been satisfied that effective local government is not likely to be achieved by the exercise of powers under the 2009 Measure, it is only then that the Welsh Ministers may, if they are satisfied that it is necessary to achieve local government, make an amalgamation order.
193.The Welsh Ministers will have to explain a proposal for amalgamation in the documentation required under section 169 (see below); the explanation will have to demonstrate how the Welsh Ministers reached their conclusion.
194.Section 162 also requires an amalgamation order to cover various issues fundamental to an amalgamation and the creation of a new authority, including abolition of the existing areas, the creation of the new area, its name, its designation as a county or county borough, the establishment of the new local authority as a county, or county borough, council and the winding up and dissolution of the councils of the existing areas.