Question: You took over as head of the WLGA last year from Sir Harry Jones, who was a big figure in Welsh local government for many years. How challenging was that?

Alex Aldridge: It was quite traumatic really, I was fairly confident in my own ability here at Flintshire county council, but when you step on the wider stage it is a challenge. At the same time there was a significant loss of recognised leaders within Wales and major changes, so it was quite a big step.

Question: The Cardiff assembly recently introduced "golden goodbyes" for long standing councillors in a bid to encourage younger people to join councils, has that been a success?

Alex Aldridge: My opinions are very strong on that, either you should have done it for everyone or not at all. The piecemeal arrangements didn’t satisfy anybody and quite frankly it caused a lot of disdain from the public at large because they saw there was no new blood within local government despite the payments.

I always maintain that anybody who is going to rest the whole of their career and their family well-being on a basic salary of £10,500 wants their heads examining. You cannot run a family on the basic salary of £10,500. That is what councillors get and how you manage to get over that issue is still a conundrum.

I understood the spirit of the move, and the fact that nobody ever complains when MEPs, MP, AMs and the rest get big pay-offs and pensions annoys me. Some councillors have actually served 30 years for their constituents and very loyally. So I was in favour, the only thing I took umbrage with is that is should have been a regulatory way of dealing with it, either everybody got it or nobody should have had it.

Aldridge on devolution

Question: What is your view of the effect devolution has had on local government?

Alex Aldridge: Its improving and one of the areas I’m leading on at the moment is the relationship between the WLGA and our assembly.

It has been fraught with a number of difficulties over the previous four to five years but that’s more to do with the number of personalities.

Basically the assembly as yet is still to resonate with the public at large. Most people still turn to their members of parliament to resolve their issues, albeit that we still have something like 85 per cent of the delivery pattern of general services on a day to day basis.

It’s still fighting for recognition, they are coming up with a number of key initiatives which have seen significant benefits, but it’s going to be a while yet for people to understand that the assembly does have the level of impact that it does on a day to day basis.

Question: Is there ever a conflict between councils and the assembly on there areas of responsibility?

Alex Aldridge: There will always be that because as both of us emerge both from a decade of reorganisation and they push through changes then the conflicts become greater and there is a blurring of issues.

Take the health agenda as an example. I have said to the health minister and to MPs, local health boards, trusts and ourselves, that the edges are really blurred out there about who has what responsibility for what and that just adds to the confusion out there for our electorate.

Questions: Have recent problems with Blaenau Gwent’s social services demonstrated that smaller councils need to co-operate more closely, or even merge with larger ones to cope with more complex areas like social services?

Alex Aldridge: I think co-operation more than merger is much more likely at least within the next 10 years. In the first instance we met with Blaenau Gwent's leader John Hopkins hosting what was the first of a number of key meetings by the WLGA about collaborative working.

Recently I've had a video conference with the new minister for social services and Jane Davidson as well as the minister for local government and finance Sue Essex, and we all discussed the issue of out of county social service places and special education places.

The time has come now when certain councils must be the lead authority in the provision of a number of these key complex areas, and to that end I’m delighted that the association are embracing and recognizing that need.

The fact is that a number of authorities will be leading under a collaborative umbrella needed for three, four, five authorities or even just next door, so that agenda is now very much alive.

The way that is structured could be a north, mid and south regional provision, but it could be a next door provision, it could be an all-Wales provision. Lets look at the issues of energy because that’s another we were talking about, we were talking that the biggest agenda we’ve got is waste management, and that was another one on the video link.

The areas we are looking at for this kind of co-operation is waste management, energy, out-of-county school places, so the sole issue mixed in with special education needs, that is in the top five, and now we need to work that up and find a process of finding out who, where and how.

Aldridge on PR

Question: Has the introduction of proportional representation to elect Scottish local government influenced your thinking about how councillors are elected?

Alex Aldridge: I don’t agree with PR. I’m a Labour Party person, I’ve been in the Labour Party all my life, and if I wanted PR then I wouldn’t be in the party. I've stood on the manifesto and backed the Labour Party through thick and thin, PR is something that other people in the lesser party promulgate because they know they will never get into power, if your policies are that good then the people will elect you on what they believe is a positive outcome.

I do power share at the council on a number of the key regulatory committees, we are expanding the scrutiny in the next municipal year from four to six and two opposition people will be doing two of the scrutiny jobs as well as two opposition already doing audit and licensing so we do collaborative work there. I don’t think you get good politics out of PR because what you get is a consensus without any kind of vision and if it gets a bit thorny everybody blames each other and inertia sets in.

Question: What are the challenges facing the WLGA this year?

Alex Aldridge: We have to change as an association. We can’t go through the throws of what we witnessed for the previous four years even with the stature of someone like Sir Harry.

The levels of frustration within the WLGA and the inability of us to be an effective fighting force driving forward an agenda where people could resonate with us has made it clear we must deal first of all with local government itself and looking at where our strengths and weaknesses are, look at the databases, shared information and get the very best out. And if another authority is better than us then don’t be frightened of sharing that information.

The people of Wales are burdened with too much government, there are too many of us practicing - with the best intent - politics, on the day to day lives of the people. As an illustration I always say if Mrs Jones at the sheltered accommodation phones up because she has a dripping tap she could have five town councillors, two county councillors, a directly elected assembly member, a member of parliament, an MEP and list members from the assembly all standing in the garden dealing with one issue. If that is good business then I am the pig flying past the window now.

There are too many of us, if there were less there would be better quality services at the other end.

Aldridge on council tax

Question: What do you think of the current system of funding local government?

Alex Aldridge: The council tax system was hastily put together after the poll tax. It was a quick fix and it hasn’t worked particularly well. There is a recognition in the WLGA that this debate is going to come fast and we have to look at it because in part it is iniquitous in its delivery and on other occasions it's very good.

Here in Flintshire its below £1,000 on the average band D. If you think what you get for £1,000 in a year, its everything service-wise from the cradle to the grave.

If you compare us to other countries where you pay for the services individually, we are still good value for money.

But this doesn’t get away from the fact that a lot of people are disgruntled with the position of council tax.