councillors

New Inlogov Policy Papers

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Jason Lowther

I am delighted to let you know about four new policy papers published today by Inlogov. 

Challenger Parties in Power Locally

https://epapers.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4446

This report examines the experience of ‘challenger parties’, political parties without previous experience of government, on entering power in local government. It examines the experiences of challenger parties in English local government following electoral gains in May 2025, focusing on how Reform UK and the Green Party of England and Wales have adapted to executive roles. Evidence from multiple case studies shows that, rather than transforming local governance, these parties have generally worked within existing institutional frameworks, with some early disruption typically giving way to learning and stabilisation as members adjust to formal procedures and constraints.  The research was developed with colleagues in Inlogov’s monthly Local Government Network webinar. 

The Participatory Council

http://epapers.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4443/

Councils need to develop participatory governance arrangements to address the declined levels of public trust in government, by giving residents a meaningful voice in decision making, improving transparency, and ensuring policies better reflect community needs and priorities. This report examines how councils can support institutional culture change towards participatory policymaking, drawing lessons from UK and international experiences. Too often, great work by individual officers, members or specific projects is lost because the council as an institution is ill prepared for public participation. The report argues that participatory policymaking must be deeply embedded within governance structures to enable meaningful engagement, mobilise diverse communities, and support mutual learning and transformative change. Achieving this requires facilitative leadership and the cultivation of boundary-spanning roles that bridge divides between government, civil society, and local communities. Advancing inclusive participation also demands an intersectional approach that centres marginalised voices to address systemic inequalities. This paper was written by Dr Sonia Bussu.

Paying For Democracy

https://epapers.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4445

Councillor remuneration plays a critical role in shaping participation in local democracy and the effectiveness of council governance, yet the current system in England remains inconsistent and increasingly misaligned with modern expectations. The total annual cost is around £230 million. Allowances vary widely between councils, reflecting a structure that has not kept pace with inflation or the growing demands of the role. This misalignment contributes to persistent barriers to participation, particularly for working-age individuals, those without independent financial means, and carers, with evidence indicating that remuneration levels directly affect both the diversity of candidates and their retention in office. Addressing these challenges requires setting more accessible allowance levels to broaden participation, enhancing consistency and transparency, expanding and normalising support mechanisms, and improving the evidence base to support informed and equitable remuneration decisions. Thanks to Emeritus Professor Colin Copus and Mr Ray Tomkinson for co-authoring this paper.

Constitutionalising English Local Government?

http://epapers.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4444

Government discourse increasingly accentuates devolution and local autonomy, using constitutional language. This paper aims to take the debate forward by examining the prospects for constitutional entrenchment of English local government within the existing uncodified constitutional framework. Encompassing both strategic and principal authorities within the term “local government”, it assesses what entrenchment could mean in the absence of a codified constitution, what obstacles stand in its way, and how constitutional weight could accumulate over time. The paper was written by Inlogov associate Prof Jonathan Davies. 

Labour must listen, learn and change if it is to regain trust

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Ketan Sheth

After two decades as a Labour councillor in Brent, I was deeply disappointed to lose my Wembley seat in the local elections on 7th May —  serving our local residents has been a great honour and privilege, and I remain grateful to everyone who placed their trust in me over the years.

I do feel, though, that Labour needs to learn urgent lessons from these disastrous results. Again and again on the doorstep, people told me that they valued my work as a councillor and would happily vote for me again — but they simply could not bring themselves to put a cross next to a Labour candidate. There is a deep well of anger in Brent, and across the whole country — a feeling that the Labour government has let people down and failed to deliver the change they promised in 2024.

Make no mistake, voters reflected the national political picture rather than what is going on in Brent. People relate local grievances like the state of our roads, pavements and parks to a wider sense of hopelessness based on their view of where we are nationally, rather than voting specifically on local matters. Indeed, many people said they voted on issues like immigration or the economy which local government has no power to fix.

This is arguably always the case in local elections and I’m hardly the first local councillor to lose their seat due to people’s views on how well the national government is or is not doing. But this time felt different. The vitriol directed towards the government, and the Prime Minister, was stronger than anything I have encountered while canvassing in the past. Unless Labour changes direction quickly and radically, it is hard to see how future elections will yield a different result. Labour has made big mistakes in government — our first notable action was the winter fuel payments fiasco and we seemed to go on making mis-steps from there. The appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador was a catastrophic error of judgement. The cost of living crisis remains largely unaddressed — voters do not see their lives or their crumbling public services getting any better. All of these things are exacerbated by our government offering no hope that things are about to improve. We need to listen to what the voters are telling us — and we need a sharp, fast change of direction.

Locally, addressing our collective challenges under a hung council will be difficult, as it is always easier for a Council to have a clear electoral mandate and we now have a position where there will need to be negotiation and trade-offs between the different parties. But I am sure all those involved will take their responsibilities seriously and work together to deliver for the people of Brent.

For my own part, I will hugely miss representing local people as part of Brent Council. I want to thank those who voted for me, the officers and colleagues who supported me over many years. I will continue to be active in local politics and to campaign for a better deal for the communities I was proud to serve.

Understanding Mayoral Accountability: Insights from Japan and the UK

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Jason Lowther

What makes a directly elected mayor genuinely accountable to the public? How do contrasting political and administrative systems shape the conduct, choices, and leadership styles of those entrusted with substantial local authority? These questions were central to a recent Inlogov seminar led by Akinari Takehisa, former mayor of Setouchi City in Japan, and as part of his PhD studies at Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan, visiting researcher at Nottingham Business School. Drawing on a rare combination of long mayoral experience and rigorous academic research, Aki offered a compelling comparative exploration of how accountability is constructed and enacted within Japan and the United Kingdom.

Aki’s work centres on executive mayors, leaders who uniquely embody both political and managerial authority. Unlike council leaders or ministers, who operate within more layered decision-making structures, executive mayors face the dual responsibility of providing political direction and ensuring the effective, lawful, and ethical delivery of public services. This dual role offers the promise of coherence and visibility in leadership, while simultaneously demanding a careful balance between responsiveness, organisational discipline, professional values, and legal boundaries.

Why Compare Japan and the UK?

Although Japan and the UK represent different political traditions, their local government systems share notable similarities. Both countries are advanced democracies with historically strong central oversight of municipal administration. Both have grappled with questions of local leadership and experimented with models aimed at enhancing the authority and public visibility of mayors.  Japan has adopted the directly elected mayor model across all of its 1,718 municipalities, embedding it deeply into local governance. The UK, by contrast, has applied the model selectively, introducing executive mayors in just 13 principal local authorities since 2002. This contrast creates a rich basis for comparison: one system fully institutionalised, the other still evolving.

But the most significant insights emerge from how each country structures accountability. Japan’s governance arrangements involve vertically layered responsibilities shared between national, prefectural and municipal governments. This can foster helpful coordination, but it can also confuse responsibility when things go wrong. The UK, meanwhile, relies heavily on arm’s-length accountability mechanisms, with statutory roles such as Section 151 Officers and Monitoring Officers acting as key guardians of financial integrity and legal compliance. These institutional safeguards create clearer boundaries around mayoral authority.

Three Core Questions

Aki’s research explores three interrelated questions. The first concerns how institutional environments in Japan and the UK shape mayoral accountability. The second looks at how personal characteristics (leadership styles, professional backgrounds, and the use of performance information) influence accountable behaviour. The third examines the behavioural traits that support or undermine accountability, identified through interviews and narrative analysis.

To address these questions, Aki conducted extensive fieldwork: interviews with 15 mayors and six key stakeholders in Japan, and with six mayors and six stakeholders in the UK. This qualitative evidence was supplemented with a literature review and advanced comparative techniques, including fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), which allows researchers to understand complex relationships across multiple cases.

What the Early Findings Reveal

A first major insight concerns the impact of institutional contexts. In Japan, accountability reforms have unfolded gradually since the 1990s, driven by incremental devolution and efforts to improve transparency. The use of performance information has grown, though its uptake varies significantly between municipalities. In the UK, accountability has evolved in more dramatic cycles. Reforms associated with New Public Management in the 1980s, followed by the Best Value regime in the late 1990s and 2000s, significantly expanded performance oversight before many national requirements were rolled back during the austerity era after 2010.

A second key finding arises from the fsQCA analysis. Mayors who demonstrated consistently high levels of political, hierarchical, professional and legal accountability were far more likely to sustain long and stable careers. By contrast, those whose professional or legal accountability was weak were more likely to experience short or troubled terms, particularly in Japan where mayors enjoy substantial personal discretion. Interestingly, extensive use of performance information did not necessarily correlate with stronger accountability. Its effectiveness depended on how thoughtfully and transparently it was applied.

Aki also found that behavioural characteristics play a decisive role. Inclusive leadership, transparency, ethical judgement, and constructive collaboration with professional officers strengthened accountability in both countries. Conversely, secrecy, impulsive or populist decision‑making, and blurred boundaries between political campaigning and administrative neutrality frequently undermined it. Japan and the UK each demonstrated examples of positive “synergies” between political and managerial roles, such as the ability to commit to long‑term policies or communicate strategy clearly to the public. But both also exhibited negative synergies when these roles clashed or overlapped in unhelpful ways.

Conclusions

Aki’s emerging conclusions highlight the importance of recognising accountability as a multidimensional and dynamic practice. Japan continues to advance its approach through gradual decentralisation, while the UK contends with the legacies of shifting reform agendas. Yet in both countries, the success of directly elected mayors rests not only on the formal powers they hold, but on the quality of leadership they exercise and the institutional structures that guide and constrain them.

The research offers valuable lessons for policymakers, practitioners and scholars. It suggests that accountability must be intentionally designed and continuously reinforced. Clear institutional roles, better training and development for mayors, and stronger professional support structures can all contribute to more effective local leadership. As debates about mayoral systems continue in both countries, the insights from Aki’s work provide a timely and thoughtful contribution to understanding what truly makes local democratic leadership accountable.

You can view the whole (50 mins) seminar here:
https://bham.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=76530fc7-ce2a-4884-964a-b3fd00c80704&start=1315.148058

Jason Lowther is director of Inlogov, the Institute of Local Government Studies, at the University of Birmingham

Forget the temperature, for councillor discretion, look north!

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Photo by Michael D Beckwith on Pexels.com

Chris Game

You may just possibly have seen the recent report: “Oldham councillors must repay overpaid allowances due to payroll error”.  And thought: “Mmm – sounds a bit tough; surely councillors don’t organise their own payments?” 

Surely it would be the Council Treasurer’s responsibility, or his/her staff – probably his, given that the senior echelons of the local government treasury profession are around three-quarters male?  After all, they’re the ones who ran the faulty allowances system and must have, repeatedly, made the faulty calculations. 

You might indeed suppose so, but it’s not what happened here. Those 82 Oldham councillors were, it seems, overpaid a (combined!) total of £104,000 due to a systemic error, or rather errors, repeated apparently over at least three financial years.

The error was acknowledged as an administrative one, by council staff, and the salaries of those responsible are being docked accordingly; in particular the Director of Finance, whose six-figure salary (of, coincidentally, £104,000!  No, I’m totally guessing that bit!) could at least bear it. You might suppose?

However, that’s NOT at all how our local government division of responsibilities between elected councillors and salaried officers works. Here the whole £110,000 is having to be repaid by the innocently benefitting councillors – who most certainly don’t get dockable salaries.

So what are actually being ‘docked’ here are the relevant councillors’ basic and ‘Special Responsibility’ allowances, the latter being for those in various leadership positions: cabinet members, chairs of committees, party group leaders, and suchlike. 

Oldham is generally a Labour-led council and currently ‘ordinary’ council members receive a Basic Allowance of roughly £12,000. Other Member Allowances include the Council Leader £43,000, Deputy Leader £26,000, Executive Members £22,000, the Mayor £17,000, Chairs of various Scrutiny Boards – Licensing, Planning, Children & Young People, Health & Wellbeing, etc.- £11,000. It’s hardly megabucks.

In short, elected councillors are being made to pay, from their modest responsibility allowances, for ‘administrative errors’ made over several years by the council’s administrators – the clue’s in that adjective!

It seems wrong in principle, and it’s also horribly mistimed, coming as it does when some genuine efforts are being made to increase the perceived attractiveness of the councillor role and thereby extend the range of socio-economic backgrounds from which our local representatives are drawn.

Just a few weeks ago, for instance, at Labour’s party conference, Communities Secretary Steve Reed – a council Leader himself before becoming an MP – announced that he would be restoring councillors’ access to pensions through the Local Government Pension Scheme that the Conservative Government had removed. There is also talk of improving parental leave and reviewing the allowances system.

And not before time. For few in local government seriously doubt the deterrent impact on councillor recruitment of the 2012 removal of pension entitlement by the then Minister for Communities and Local Government, Eric (now Lord) Pickles.

Former Leader of Bradford Council, Pickles knew exactly what he was doing, as he increased councils’ financial discretion, while cutting considerably the funding over which to exercise it, and his patronising ’50 money-saving tips’ were contributing to the dire financial straits so many councils have found themselves in since.

At which point – in the distant past, when I was lecturing regularly and having to produce student ‘handouts’ – I’d probably have referred to a few overseas examples, showing how relatively demanding the English councillor’s role is and how under-compensated our councillors generally are.  

First, and most obviously, there’s the potential workload, very crudely illustrated by the average number of electors per councillor: 120 in France, 250 in Sweden, 2,350 in Ireland … and (currently) 2,600 in the UK as a whole.

Then the councillor payment systems: England – a basic allowance of, typically, £10,000 – £12,000 p.a., plus a bit extra for ‘Special Responsibilities’, and (wow!) expenses for travel and childcare.

By comparison, or contrast: the USA – highly variable, obviously, but an average US councillor’s salary is currently around $51,000 (£39,000), rising in New York, where everything’s gross, to $148,000 (£113,000).

Back in the real world, at the other end of the spectrum, are Norway/Sweden, where the councillor role is still generally considered voluntary, with councillors receiving ‘modest’ allowances to cover costs.  

They’re quite fun, but these international comparisons/contrasts aren’t terribly helpful in considering the future of English local government. Or necessary, as, on the proverbial doorstep we have sensible Scotland, where, nearly 20 years ago now, they switched from our patronising, cheeseparing ‘allowances’ system to actual councillor salaries – of currently, and precisely, £25,982.

That’s the basic salary. Senior councillors will generally receive a higher salary, up to perhaps around £50,000 for a Council Leader, with councils themselves having the ‘grown-up’ discretion of paying senior councillors up to 75% of the Leader’s pay.

And there’s more. Scottish councillors are eligible to join their Local Government Pension Scheme, to payment of allowances for subsistence and travel, and reimbursement of expenses incurred when undertaking council duties – a regular source of dispute ‘darn Sarf’.

Which brings me to my closing thought. Oldham, where we started, is almost exactly midway between London and Edinburgh, and local authorities in both England and Scotland are financially, in my view, heavily over-dependent on their respective central governments. But, if a student asked me in which country I’d prefer to be an elected councillor, I’d say: “Never mind the temperature, choose the occupational discretion”  

This post appeared initially in The Birmingham Post edition of Thursday, December 11th.

Chris Game is an INLOGOV Associate, and Visiting Professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, Osaka, Japan.  He is joint-author (with Professor David Wilson) of the successive editions of Local Government in the United Kingdom, and a regular columnist for The Birmingham Post.

Local Government in the Czech Republic During Two Recent Crises

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Dr Paul Joyce

A recent book on local government in Czechia offers valuable lessons for anyone involved in local governance, emergency planning, or public sector reform. The book, edited by Balík and Špaček, explores how local government responded to two major crises: the COVID-19 pandemic and the influx of refugees following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The editors describe Czechia’s  local government as “fragmented”. By this, they do not mean fragmented in terms of lack of coordination. Instead, they use the term in a structural and territorial sense: the country has a very large number of small municipalities. In fact, there are over 6,000 municipalities in Czechia, and the median size is fewer than 500 residents.

At first glance, this sounds like a recipe for weakness. However, the book tells a very different story. During both crises, support and coordination from the national government was widely experienced as slow, inconsistent and, at times, chaotic. By contrast, local mayors often stepped forward quietly and decisively to support their communities. As Balík and Špaček put it:

“Mayors of small municipalities rarely speak of crisis management in systemic terms; instead, they focus on immediate, practical solutions to specific problems… Small local governments tackled emergencies as they came with the capacities they had… The ability of small municipalities to adapt quickly and provide personalised assistance was critical in the early stages of both crises…” (2026, p.177)

In many places, local government was really the only consistent source of stability. One of the key strengths highlighted in the book is social capital – the trust, relationships, and local knowledge embedded in communities. This proved crucial, particularly during the refugee crisis:

“The strength of small municipalities was in the individual commitment, personal ties, and local knowledge—knowing who to turn to in case of problems and how to solve specific issues” (Balík and Špaček, 2026, p.176).

Even in very small towns and villages in Czechia, local government is present and visible. Mayors and councillors are highly trusted, far more than national politicians, and citizens see them as accessible, familiar, and reliable. In crisis conditions, this trust enabled rapid mobilisation of volunteers, associations, fire brigades, community groups and informal support networks.

Interestingly, the book also notes that although inter-municipal cooperation is voluntary and not financially incentivised by national government, over 80% of Czech municipalities are involved in some form of collaboration. During the crises, some mayors consulted colleagues in neighbouring areas, shared information, and worked through voluntary municipal networks.

However, and this is an important point, the book does not show that there was a large, coordinated, systematic collaborative governance response at national scale. There is no hard data indicating how widespread or effective inter-municipal cooperation was during the crises. What the authors do state is that cooperation was informal, uneven, and dependent on existing relationships and trust.

In fact, they emphasise that local responses were often “highly individualised”. In other words, municipalities generally acted on their own initiative, using their own judgement, knowledge and resources to solve immediate problems. Horizontal networks sometimes supported this, but they did not replace largely autonomous decision-making.

What stands out most during the crises is vertical incoherence: poor communication, unclear leadership, and constant change in guidance from central government. Mayors described regulations changing “three times a day”, written in legal language that nobody understood, and official information arriving after the media had already reported it. In the early stages of both COVID-19 and the refugee crisis, national guidance was often described as vague, delayed or non-existent.

As a result, mayors relied heavily on their own judgement and “common sense”. Why? Because they had to respond to reality as it unfolded in front of them. This leads to an important conclusion: Czechia was not “saved by collaborative governance” in a formal, system-wide sense. Instead, it was held together by local leadership, strong relationships, deep community knowledge, and trust.

Implications for UK local government

For those working in or with UK local government, the Czech experience raises important questions.

For years, public sector reform has often focused on scale, efficiency, and consolidation. We tend to assume that bigger organisations are stronger, more capable, and more resilient. The Czech case challenges this assumption. It suggests that in times of crisis, small, trusted, locally embedded structures can be incredibly powerful.

This does not mean the UK should “fragment” its local government system. But it does suggest that structural reforms aimed purely at efficiency can come at a hidden cost: the loss of proximity, trust, responsiveness, and local knowledge that make rapid, context-sensitive action possible.

The Czech experience also highlights the risks of poor vertical coordination. When national guidance is unclear or incoherent, the pressure falls heavily on local government. In those moments, what really matters is not the size of the organisation, but:

•           The quality of relationships

•           The level of trust

•           The strength of civic networks

•           The confidence of local leaders

•           The use of local knowledge

For the UK, the message may be this: alongside reform for efficiency and scale, we need to invest in robust governance, that is, in communication, trust, community capacity, and strong vertical relationships between central and local government.

Reference: Balík, S. and Špaček, D. (eds.) (2026) Fragmented Local Government Systems and Crises: Experiences from Czechia. Governance and Public Management Series. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan / Springer Nature Switzerland AG. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-01897-7

Paul Joyce is an Associate at INLOGOV, University of Birmingham, a Visiting Professor in Public Management at Leeds Beckett University, and Publications Director of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS) which is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. He has a PhD from London School of Economics and Political Science

Crisis management in cities: how politicians and public servants worked together during the Ukrainian refugee reception

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Dr. Nicolai De Wulf, Prof. Dr. Joris Voets

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, millions of people fled their homes seeking safety across Europe. In Belgium, cities such as Antwerp, Ghent, and Mechelen were suddenly faced with the urgent task of housing and supporting thousands of Ukrainian refugees. Local leaders had to act fast, building emergency villages almost overnight. But how do politics and administration work together when everything is urgent?

In my recent article in Local Government Studies (co-authored with Joris Voets), we examined how local governments managed this unprecedented crisis and how politicians and civil servants collaborated under pressure. Our study provides new insights into how city administrations function when crises disrupt “business as usual”.

The local dimension of crisis management

Local governments are the first to respond when crises hit. They are close to citizens, know their communities, and must act fast. But crises like the arrival of Ukrainian refugees test even the most prepared administrations. They demand not only logistical problem-solving, like building emergency housing, but also leadership, trust, and coordination across political and administrative levels.

The study draws on 25 interviews with mayors, aldermen, and senior civil servants in Antwerp, Ghent, and Mechelen. These cities hosted the highest numbers of Ukrainian refugees in Flanders and each built an “emergency village” to provide collective housing.

Politics and administration: not separate worlds

Traditionally, politics and administration are seen as separate spheres: politicians make decisions, and civil servants carry them out. However, decades of research, including the complementarity model developed by Svara, show that successful governance depends on cooperation between the two. The shared responsibility is aptly visualised:

The study addresses the following research question: ‘How complementary are the interactions between politics and administration in cities during the management of the Ukrainian refugee crisis?’

Our study shows that this politico-administrative complementarity is clearly observed during the Ukrainian refugee crisis. Crises blur boundaries: decisions must be made quickly, communication is intense, and trust becomes vital. We replaced the 4 building blocks of ‘regular’ policy making (missions, policy, administration, and management) by 4 crisis management tasks (sense-making, decisions making and coordinating, meaning making and accounting, and learning). We visualised the politico-administrative role division, as for example for the case in Antwerp:

Overall, the tasks of sense-making and learning are predominantly performed by the administration. It has to be noted that the ‘lessons learned’ primarily relate to adaptations along the way, rather than formal evaluations. The decision and coordination task shows a very mixed image: in each of the 3 cases under study, the responsibility of the decision lies, of course, with the politicians. However, the deliberation preceding the decision always showed a shared effort. The meaning-making and account-giving task is predominantly taken on by the politicians involved, most notably the mayors.

Three cities, three approaches

Antwerp had a clearly structured crisis response, with distinct political and administrative levels. The Emergency Planning Coordinator (EPC) played a key role as liaison between the mayor’s team and the city administration.

Ghent adopted a more collaborative approach, with large crisis meetings that included both the College of Mayor and Aldermen and the Management Team. This inclusivity built broad consensus but also slowed decision-making.

In Mechelen, the acting mayor and Emergency Planning Coordinator shared leadership, while the city’s political “DNA” of human rights and diversity shaped its narrative and public communication.

In all cases, civil servants were observed operating in a political world. Primarily the Emergency Planning Coordinators, but also civil servants such as project managers, can play a very determining role in the structuring of the crisis management approach, decision-making, and coordination.

Lessons for local crisis management

Complementarity works: Trust and mutual respect between political and administrative leaders were crucial. In all three cities, politicians and administrators worked as a team, but with notable differences in style. City identity shapes response, each city’s political culture influenced how it managed the crisis.

The study highlights that crises are not only technical challenges but governance challenges. They reveal the real dynamics of how cities work.

For practitioners, the message is clear: invest in relationships between political and administrative leaders before the next crisis hits. For scholars, this case offers evidence that Svara’s complementarity model holds up even under crisis conditions, but needs adaptation to capture the intensity and speed of crisis decision-making.

As crises become more frequent, cities need to build governance systems based on trust, expertise, and teamwork. Complementarity between politics and administration is not a luxury, it is what keeps local government resilient when it matters most.

Dr. Nicolai De Wulf (ORCID 0000-0002-1748-6604) finalised his PhD focusing on politico-administrative relations within local government. In the PhD three topics are studied through a politico-administrative lens: policy integration and coordination, partisan political staff, and crisis management. The PhD was supervised by prof. dr. Joris Voets.

Prof. Dr. Joris Voets (ORCID 0000-0002-8266-8607) is an associate professor in the Department of Public Governance and Management at Ghent University, Belgium. His main research interests are inter-organisational networks and local government.