Devolution – what on earth’s it got to do with the public?

05/11/201505/11/2015 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Chris Game

In Catherine Staite’s recent blog – ‘Devolution: a journey into the unknown?’ – she noted that the big differences between, say, New Labour’s numerous central-local projects and the way Combined Authorities (CAs) and devolution deals are being stitched together (yes, I think that’s the right term), are the Treasury-charged power dynamic and the resulting pace of change: “If DCLG tries to drive change, it is at the mercy of the Treasury. When the Treasury drives change, it happens.”

For understandable reasons – for, like the Treasury, she too had goodies to offer – Catherine swiftly moved on: “So what next?”. Having no goodies myself, I shall stop off for at least a brief stocktake of what has become a key recent theme: the role of the citizen and voter – or the lack of one – in this whole devolution business.

In my previous devolution blog I compared, with much help from the Local Government Chronicle, the range of functions and services covered in the 30+ English CA devolution bids. These bids aren’t public documents, but I assumed at least most of the bigger and seriously ambitious CAs would have chosen – even though I knew my own hadn’t – to make decent summaries of their bids accessible to any residents curious to learn what powers were being sought in their name.

We now know, thanks this time to the Municipal Journal, just who has and hasn’t chosen to publish. MJ researchers found that almost a third of CA bids submitted aren’t accessible to even the most enthusiastic of their more than 21 million residents. The population figures made a good strapline, helped by their including all three GB capital city CAs, but it was the explanations/excuses of the non-publishers that made the most interesting – in every sense – reading.

London simply couldn’t be bothered to offer a comment. And Cardiff, like a virgin gambler thinking George Osborne might find it amusing to play bluffing games with local authorities, described its bid as “more like an opening gambit with the Treasury”.

Then there was Greater Manchester. Given the devolutionary leadership role the CA and its predecessors have rightly earned, it sounded almost a betrayal to hear Manchester City Council leader Sir Richard Leese pronounce that “We don’t think [the bid] has much business in the public domain while it’s still in the development stage”.

There seems so much wrong with this hoarding approach that it’s hard to know where to begin. It’s élitist, insulting, alienating, divisive and, certainly not least, counterproductive. For, as Catherine Staite noted to the Local Government Chronicle, it reinforces the Treasury’s top-down, divide-and-rule approach to the whole devolution process, leading CAs to tailor their bids and measure their ‘success’ with reference to what others have got, rather than what is in the best interests of their particular areas and communities.

Thankfully, spokespersons for the published bids took strikingly different views – like John Sinnott (CE, Leicestershire): “All partners believe it is important to be transparent about their intentions – both ahead of and during the negotiations.”; Nicola Beach (CE, Greater Essex): “I think it’s really important that we are transparent on this because it’s a partnership approach. Communication is important, so we’ve put as much detail into the public domain as we can.”; and Joe Anderson (Elected Mayor, Liverpool): “I don’t see why anyone would want to keep it secret.” (Joe Anderson, Elected Mayor, Liverpool).

Well, Joe, the West Midlands CA is one that very definitely wants to – and, moreover, to outsource responsibility for doing so. Its spokesperson (anonymous) claimed: “We’re not allowed to release the documents. The Treasury told us we cannot publish it.” Which a Treasury spokeswoman (equally anonymous) promptly denied: “Regions are free to decide whether they want to publish the documents or not. We haven’t told anybody not to go public with the bid.”

This was subsequently confirmed by the recipient of the most recent devo deal, Tees Valley CA, whose Chair, Sue Jeffrey, confirmed in the same LGC article that “Nobody ever said ‘You can’t talk about it.’ It was more the nature of the way the process was done … people were feeling their way.”

As, of course, are the rest of us – frequently in the dark. Still, it left the West Midlands as the only non-publishing CA suggested by the Treasury to be telling porkies, which is hardly likely to improve relations in its ongoing negotiations. What’s more, it threw up an apparently rather blatant case of double standards. Only a few weeks ago, Mark Rogers, Birmingham City Council CE and also President of SOLACE (Society of Local Authority Chief Executives) was describing to a SOLACE Summit audience how he was “fed up of being treated [by central government] like a child, when the organisation I work for, the partners we engage with, and the communities we serve are not children.” (my emphasis)).

Now, I don’t know what part Birmingham’s CE played in preparing the WMCA bid or whether he’s even seen the bid document. But I would suggest there are few quicker ways of getting ‘communities’ to feel they are being treated like children than to tell them that something that’s manifestly going to affect all their lives is none of their business.

The big irony here, however, is that, while the Treasury and WMCA disagree over the responsibility for the secrecy of the latter’s bid details, on the general PPP principle of the Public’s Proper Place their views are identical, as we saw over what promises to be the interesting issue of devolution referendums.

On October 25th, as part of its inquiry into the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill, the Commons Communities and Local Government Committee held an evidence session at Manchester Town Hall. Following a Q & A with members of the public, the MPs heard from several leaders of the GMCA boroughs, but also from the Greater Manchester Referendum Campaign for Democratic Devolution. As with all its devolution programme, in this feature too Manchester sets the pace for the rest of the country.

It was launched back in January, two months after the announcement of ‘Devo Manc’, the first phase of the GMCA’s extensive devolution deal, part of which entailed having a directly elected mayor, who in interim form took office in June. The elected mayor issue provided a focus for the referendum campaign, but its organisers insist that it’s not devolution per se they’re opposed to, but devolution by diktat.

They argue that “ordinary people” should have the basic democratic right to have a say in “any changes, welcome or otherwise, to the way they are governed”. By contrast, the existing devolution package is conditional on its “imposition on the people of Greater Manchester, without any reference to their views whatsoever, of a directly elected mayor – a form of government which … has been either directly rejected by voters or by local councils themselves for their own areas.”

At which point, it may be tiresome but nevertheless useful – as we’re bound to be hearing a lot more of them – to take a brief terminological break to clarify just which of these kinds of polls are technically referendums and which aren’t. The 2012 metro-mayoral ones just alluded to definitely were: a policy enacted in government legislation but referred to local electors to approve or reject. So too are the council tax referendums that councils nowadays must hold, and win, if they wish to raise council tax by a higher percentage than that specified by the Government.

However, “having a say”, as demanded by the Manchester Referendum Campaign, sounds like and would be a non-binding consultative ballot – and likewise the highly significant vote promised to County Durham electors on the county’s share of the recently announced North East devolution deal.

Like the visiting MPs, GMCA leaders – several of whom, including Sir Richard Leese, were handed a severe kicking in the 2008 congestion charge referendum – will have heard Referendum Campaign spokesman David Fernandez-Arias attack their “back-room deals”, with “no public awareness, no public consultation, no democratic engagement, no scrutiny and no impact assessment.”

And the threat: “There are 17 priorities [GMCA indicators chosen to assess the devolution deal’s impact] and none concern improving democratic participation by the public. We will target leaders’ wards in [next May’s] elections just by canvassing and publishing results of what people think.”

It seemed appropriate in Rugby World Cup Final week that, immediately following this dangerous referendum talk, the DCLG should proverbially get its retaliation in first – a spokesman asserting that “local leaders had a mandate to make decisions for their areas and any opposition to them could be expressed through the ballot box”. And that was before County Durham’s announcement, so whatever the government and obviously some council leaders might hope, it’s already proved not the last word on the matter.

Chris Game is a Visiting Lecturer at INLOGOV interested in the politics of local government; local elections, electoral reform and other electoral behaviour; party politics; political leadership and management; member-officer relations; central-local relations; use of consumer and opinion research in local government; the modernisation agenda and the implementation of executive local government.

Will we miss it when it’s gone?

02/11/201502/11/2015 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Anthony Mason, Senior Associate INLOGOV

As the Housing and Planning Bill reaches its second reading in the House of Commons, Anthony Mason reflects on the slow death of council housing in England.

Have you noticed that ministers have taken to referring to council house tenancies as “subsidised tenancies” and council tenants as having “subsidised rents”? The Housing Minister has especially embraced this Lynton Crosbie-esque habit – just for example in an interview with the Radio 4’s World at One on 14^th October 2015. Perhaps it’s understandable that ministers use this potentially emotive (and certainly inaccurate) language – but even our supposedly impartial civil service has adopted it in the formal consultation on the government’s “pay to stay” scheme out now.

If you google “subsidy” the one of the first definitions offered is a sum of money granted by the state or a public body to help an industry or business keep the price of a commodity or service low. As aficionados know, council housing finance is a complexity wrapped in a convolution, but using that definition, by no means that I can think of, is council housing subsidised.

After many years of complicated national financial transfers where better off tenants bankrolled poorer ones; those English councils that retained council housing became self-financing on 1st April 2012. This was a move long promoted by councils, developed by the prior Labour government, but actually put in place by Grant Shapps – that most Conservative of housing ministers. Around 170 local authorities held housing stock at that time and of these, around 130 paid more than £13 billion to the government, with the government paying off around £6 billion of loans for the remaining authorities. The deal was then that the service was ring-fenced and self-supporting; thus rents and judicious borrowing would support necessary expenditure on repairs and investment in homes. The system is not supported by the taxpayer – either at the local or national level. Clearly, some tenants claim housing benefit – which is a form of subsidy – but so do tenants in all sectors.

Ministerial attacks don’t end with imprecise language about the nature of council tenancies. The Conservative government has set off a small earthquake around housing policy this year, only some of which is contained in the current Housing and Planning Bill (“pay to stay”; the right to buy for housing association tenants, and the forced sale of higher value council homes to pay for this). Wider provisions include the ending of the requirement on developers to provide affordable rented homes as planning gain – and a likely requirement that only fixed term tenancies can be granted in future by councils and housing associations.

In a complete volte-face on self-financing, many of the Bill’s financial provisions will have the effect of imposing new levies on housing revenue accounts – as councils will have to make payments to government in advance, in recognition of the income they get from pay to stay and the forced sale of empty homes. The Chancellor’s summer budget also imposed across the board real cuts in social rents. And the specific housing provisions sit alongside welfare changes that affect so many social tenants of both housing associations and councils.

Perhaps a more refined understanding of housing language is needed to get to the root of what’s going on here. Ministers’ promise is that homes sold under the right to buy will be replaced one for one. What they actually mean is that homes let under social tenancies will be replaced by homes let at sub-market (that is, higher than social) rents or by low cost home ownership. Where household incomes exceed an annual £30k outside London and £40k in London, social rents will be replaced with market rents. Affordable (higher than social, but less than market) rented homes that were made available under planning gain settlements will now be replaced by low cost home ownership. And many new developments of homes at affordable rents by housing association are being switched to home ownership and market rent. So at every level of the system, lower rents will rise, or rent be replaced by home ownership. Provisions from the coalition government’s “bedroom tax” (spare room subsidy); to the possible ending of lifetime tenancies, have the effect of increasing the turnover of council tenancies – and thus the speed at which social rented homes gradually convert up the rental-to-ownership ladder.

Whether one likes them or not, these changes constitute a coherent programme that seems to stem from a view that council housing is a problem that needs to be fixed – and that fixing it involves gradually stifling it. While I wouldn’t argue for this proposition, I can at least see that it could be argued. But the oddest thing about the government’s housing policy is that ministers have not set out to make such an argument. Thus we have a radical set of measures bringing about the slow death of council housing without anyone being clear what the underlying disease is supposed to be.

So the usual confession: while I’ve worked in and around social housing all my adult life, I’m an owner occupier. But I’m not blind to the harm that worship at the altar of ever higher house prices has done to our housing system and our economy. It might just be that for UK PLC, our fixation with owner occupation does much more harm than council housing ever has.

Maybe we should all become council tenants?

Anthony Mason is a senior associate at INLOGOV where he specialises in consultancy around partnership and collaboration. He started his career in local government and then spent more than 20 years in PwC’s public sector consultancy practice. His professional background is in housing and neighbourhood regeneration.

ERDOGAN’S SNAP GENERAL ELECTION AND THE DESTINY AWAITING LOCAL GOVERNORATES IN TURKEY

29/10/201529/10/2015 / inlogov / 1 Comment

Turkey’s General Election in June 2015 did not secure the majority that President Erdogan needed to realise his dream of transforming the country’s political system from a parliamentary to a presidential republic. In the aftermath of the election, all sensitive attempts by Turkey’s political parties to form a coalition or minority government failed. Therefore, the country faces yet another election, which will be held on 1^st November. In the meantime, the long established cease-fire between the government and the outlawed PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) has collapsed and renewed fighting has broken out. Nobody knows what will happen in the upcoming election and what approach the country will take to handling the conflict.

And what might all this mean for local government in Turkey? A round of interviews recently conducted with District Governors across the country has highlighted a range of challenges now confronting local level governance and public provision. But before introducing these, it will probably be helpful to have an overview of local governance structures and public administrative arrangements in Turkey.

The local Turkish public administrative system comprises two distinct systems, one being the locally elected local/municipal authorities; the other being the governance of the central state within the localities – the latter comprising appointed governors operating at the provincial and district levels. The duties of local authorities mainly revolve around infrastructure provision and maintenance within local areas, including services such as road development, construction zoning, water facilitation and the like. In contrast, the central state, through the district governors, is responsible for a number of other key public services, including policing, education, agriculture etc.

In the past decade, local authorities in Turkey have experienced significant devolution of power from central government, with the result that much more day-to-day business concerning local communities as well as responsibility for strategic planning at the local level is now exercised by the local authorities and municipalities. Such devolution has also involved the abolition of the special city administrations that had previously been headed by the provincial governors and the transfer of responsibility for infrastructure development in the villages and towns from the governors to the local authorities.

In light of such a significant programme of devolution, it was interesting to have the opportunity recently to learn from a sample of District Governors from across Turkey how the reform process was working out in practice and of the benefits and challenges that it was perceived to be creating.

As part of the author’s doctoral research, a total of 30 district governors were interviewed during summer 2015. Of these, a few viewed the developments as potentially good for Turkey’s future in general albeit expressing some concerns about the implications for their own role as governors – i.e. in relation to their responsibilities for coordinating and leading the local branches of the central state’s administrative system. However, the majority of interviewees expressed a more pessimistic perspective and saw the change as the beginning of the end of the governor profession within the country. They highlighted, that the central administration, based in the capital city of Ankara, had transferred aspects of the governors’ authority and power to the local municipalities in lieu of devolving power or authority from the central government.

An intriguing question to be asked in relation to this otherwise bold devolution is why the shift of power stopped short of abolishing the governorships and the centre-appointed governors? And the answer would seem to lie mainly in two political concerns of the Turkish government at national level. First, there is the ‘Kurdish question’ – one of the most important issues that the Republic of Turkey has been facing for decades. The country has been quelling dissent from Kurdish rebels, particularly in its south-eastern and eastern parts, for some considerable time and the fear is that if the governorships were to be abolished, the Kurdish towns and cities would most likely want to claim autonomy from the Turkish state. Given that the governors act on behalf of the central government, they are seen as representing the state and symbolising national unity, which sends an important message within the context of the ‘Kurdish question’.

Second, the commitment to devolution is arguably less than whole- hearted within the central bureaucracy with Turkey having had a long tradition of a centrally structured state. Devolving power downwards to local administrations requires Turkey to break from that tradition, which will neither be an easy nor a quick process.

Given such circumstances, the future for devolution in this country remains somewhat uncertain, with the district governors unsure of the prospects and as a result often reluctant to exert their authority and leadership potential at a time when the spirit of localism grows ever stronger as does the people’s demand for enhanced democracy. One suggestion discussed in the interviews with several governors was for the establishment of a new form of democratically-elected governorships. Might this be a realistic way forward for Turkey in these challenging times?

Saban Akca is a doctoral researcher in INLOGOV at the University of Birmingham. His research focuses on leadership in public administration, and his doctoral thesis examines the leadership performance of local-level district governors in Turkey.

Devolution: a journey into the unknown?

23/10/201523/10/2015 / inlogov / 1 Comment

Catherine Staite, Director, INLOGOV

A key theme of the discourse on devolution in recent months has been the thrill of the new, through the creation of new local institutions – combined authorities – and new relationships between central and local government. Some old hands will have noted the similarities with previous ‘resources/powers in return for performance/compliance’ offers such as Local Area Agreements, Multi-Area Agreements and City Deals. Those ventures were characterised by big promises, wearisome competitive processes and few real benefits for local government. Those disappointments were often attributed to the dead hand of Whitehall.

So what is different now? The power dynamic is different. If DCLG tries to drive change it is at the mercy of the Treasury. When the Treasury drives change it happens. The prizes seem bigger too but perhaps the biggest difference is the pace of change. It’s certainly galvanising local authorities into action. Long-standing differences have been overcome and a sense of common purpose established in many areas. Devo deals are being negotiated and agreed at regular intervals.

So what next? Creating a combined authority and signing the deal is merely the end of the beginning. How will these new institutions and changed relationships need to develop over time? Will governance structures conceived in optimism be sufficiently strong and flexible to meet future challenges? How will politicians need to adapt their leadership style to a shared leadership model with the added ingredient of an elected metro mayor? Will the combined authorities withstand changes among the key leaders and chief executives? If one of the leaders runs for mayor will all the others stop speaking to him/her? If the mayor throws their weight about, will all the leaders withdraw their goodwill?

Academics have given significant attention to both the previous waves of change and the implications of the current approach to devolution. There is much evidence to be mined and that will help the key players in combined authorities continue to shape their governance arrangements and manage their challenges. Devolution and all its ramifications has been the hot topic at recent conferences, such as the SOLACE Summit, as well as for the LGC and MJ. However, there have been few opportunities for academics and local authorities to come together to share experiences and intelligence. The pace of change has left little time for reflection but the scale of change demands that key decisions are informed by evidence.

INLOGOV is offering four such opportunities over the next few months, starting on 5^th November. These free events are also supported by academics from the Public Services Academy and City REDI, the new economic modelling unit recently established by Birmingham Business School. Our purpose is to enable local authorities to talk to each other about all the critical issues; their experiences of negotiating with central government, of creating an effective approach to shared leadership and of hammering out shared priorities across diverse areas – as well as to take advantage of the insights which research offers about new ways to solve old problems. We hope this sharing of knowledge and experience will help ensure that this latest wave of change really does bring bring significant and lasting benefits for local authorities, their partners and – most importantly – the people they serve.

Catherine Staite is the Director of INLOGOV. She provides consultancy and facilitation to local authorities and their partners, on a wide range of issues including on improving outcomes, efficiency, partnership working, strategic planning and organisational development, including integration of services and functions.

Creating our fate through our own behaviours

19/10/2015 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Anthony Mason, Senior Associate INLOGOV

The American author Henry Miller is supposed to have said “we create our fate every day . . . most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behaviour”. Funnily enough, if you use a well-known search engine to try to find where and when he recorded this weary aphorism, you end up with pages of circular references to quotation lists. But given his complex love life (five wives and many lovers) it sounds just like the sort of thing he should have said, whether or not he did.

Those local authorities currently in deep negotiations around devolution deals or on complex partnerships with health organisations should hear Miller’s (supposed) words ringing in their ears. INLOGOV has recently completed research for the District Councils’ Network to look at a range of partnerships either led by or centred on districts. The resulting report “Building Better Collaboration” is now available from INLOGOV’s website. It was launched – perhaps appropriately – at a joint district/county summit on devolution in two tier areas.

One of our roles is to ensure that relevant research is given a practical application, so the study draws on a considerable body of academic material about partnership working to stress that individuals who will be good at collaborative working can too often be hidden away in vertical structures. “Boundary spanners” and “collaborative champions” are needed in every partnership and need to be identified, developed and encouraged.

We identify five organisational behaviours/attributes that seem to be disproportionately important in determining the success or failure of collaborative ventures: leadership, selflessness, trust, momentum and risk. Of these, the most significant for project outcomes seem to be: “audacious” early leadership; trust – grounded in an organisational culture of self-awareness; and momentum – where too many projects proceed at the speed of the slowest partner.

We noticed that in many of the partnerships we reviewed, there was at least one partner that seemed to put in much more than it could ever expect to get out in measureable benefits. We termed that selfless behaviour and the term captures something of the particular contribution that the best districts can make to partnership working. We explored why this was so – and in a way, the answer is a simple one: for districts, selflessness is actually role-appropriate behaviour. Districts represent local communities and geographies; and so minding their local interest in collaborative projects must be “creating their fate…through their own behaviours”.

As you find so often, there is a flip-side to selflessness heard in the charge of parochialism levelled at a few districts, especially by some business voices. Districts might reflect that being only champions of the local can have downsides – especially where a wide range of interests have to be reconciled for the common good, for example around a combined authority bid.

We suggest that the national local government bodies – the LGA, CCN and DCN can do much more to model good collaborative practice. Where this goes wrong, they might reflect that “…most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behaviour.”

Catherine Staite reflects on the need for 21st century partnerships in Birmingham

15/10/201515/10/2015 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Catherine Staite, Director, INLOGOV

Working in partnership in the public sector has never been easy. Diversity in size, ambition, buying power, influence and democratic legitimacy, create real challenges for partnerships. The imposition by central government of one size fits all models of partnership as a means of control didn’t help. Add the problems that arise from personality clashes and petty rivalries and its easy to see how partnerships came to be described as ‘mutual loathing in search of funding’.

Of course it wasn’t all bad. Some LSPs developed a strong collective vision for their area and some LEPs can claim significant achievements. Many partnerships demonstrated that when you involve the right people, who behave in the right way, you can establish relationships of trust that will weather challenges. That is helpful as that experience is now providing the foundations for different sorts of partnership.

The role of councils within partnerships has always been contested. Many councils espoused the view that their democratic mandate placed them in a pre-eminent position and they were leaders by right. It was the duty of partners to do their bidding. Many of their partners compounded this problem by too passive, assuming that it was the responsibility of the council to provide everything from the vision to the lunch.

Partnerships in Birmingham have always been challenging. The monolithic nature of the council and the diversity of the city have created a long running battle for control of leadership space that has damaged relationships to the detriment of residents. Many of the problems were highlighted in the Kerslake Report and resolving them is now one of the top priorities of the both the government appointed Birmingham Improvement Panel and the council itself.

The idea of co-production – harnessing the capacity of people to come together to achieve positive change – has been around for many years. Birmingham has many inspiring and energetic people who don’t buy into a cynical and defeatist narrative about Birmingham being too big to manage. They are willing to give their time and energy to work together, with but not for the council, to create a positive narrative about Birmingham, its people and its future. Birmingham Partners has a small informal steering group which is working hard to create a self-sustaining network of diverse functional partnerships and communities of interest – thereby making itself redundant. The role of the steering group is to facilitate, not control, discussions about an agenda for change. Practical support for meetings, public events and social media is provided by the University of Birmingham, Birmingham City University and Aston University.

It’s not easy for the council to let go of control. Real change is slow and messy and they are under pressure to deliver demonstrable improvements quickly. There are lots of views about what needs to happen next. The council will therefore always have a pivotal role, holding the ring and ultimately making the very difficult choices forced on them by austerity. Widening engagement and participation in those debates will both strengthen the legitimacy of those choices and mitigate their negative impact. Things can only get better – and they will.

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The Institute of Local Government Studies, University of Birmingham

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