Lessons from literature for local government

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Professor Catherine Staite LLB, MBA, FRSA

No man is an island entire of itself: every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,

As well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were.

Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind,

And therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

John Donne

When every week seems to bring news of yet another major failure of governance in a local authority, some members and officers in other councils will be fearful that the same fate will befall their own council before too long, while others will be confident that all will be well for them.

When we look at the notable governance failures that have occurred in recent years, we see a very complex picture. Causes of failure are many and varied, ranging from the absence of the most basic controls to ambitious but risky money-making schemes. Some patterns are visible in all the complexity, including, failure to listen to officer advice, engaging in commercial activities without the requisite skills and knowledge, weak financial controls and opaque decision-making processes.

Councils need both strong rules, about finance and behaviour and strong public service values. Constant vigilance and honest collective self-reflection are vital to ensure that decision makers are independent, transparent, accountable, behave with integrity, have a sense of shared purpose and focus on outcomes. Ask yourself – are our informal and formal governance arrangements fit-for-purpose? If not, where might the weaknesses lie? Look at your structures. Are your Constitution, Codes of Conduct and Standing Orders up-to-date? Is your organizational structure robust? Are your s151 officer and Monitoring Officer on the senior management team and do they report directly to the Chief Executive? Then look at your systems. Are decision making processes clear? Can projects be started without the right sign-off? Can officers exceed their authority without consequences? Last, but by no means least, take a long hard look at organizational behaviour. How do leading politicians and officers respond to being challenged? Is bad behaviour rife but undiscussable?

It’s important to avoid complacency. Most of the members and officers leading and managing councils that have failed to uphold the best standards of good governance either thought what they were doing was fine, or that they could get away with it. Sometimes those who are part of an organization are the last to notice how the patterns of weak governance and bad behaviour, which have become so familiar that they cease to be noticed, will eventually lead to their downfall. Even when officers can see that their council is not going to able to balance its books or manage its risks, it can be difficult to speak up if members do not want to listen and it can be career limiting when a bullying culture prevails. Although statutory officers have statutory powers and duties, they are will not be protected from retaliation if they are perceived to be raining on the parade of colleagues and members who, because of ambition or political expediency, have lost sight of what good governance looks like. The statutory protections that attach to senior roles are not proof against bullying or actions amounting to constructive dismissal. The power imbalance between members and officers remains significant because while members may lose positions of power, or even their seats, officers risk losing their livelihoods and even their careers.

Those members and officers who consider themselves safe from failure may take some guilty pleasure from the failure of another council, especially if its run by another party. Councils have been encouraged to compete with each other for funding and kudos, so perhaps it’s natural to feel that the standing of better run councils goes up when the reputations of failing councils go right down. That’s a big mistake, for two very strong reasons; failure of one local authority reduces public confidence in local government as whole and it gives central government convincing reasons for not delegating resources and power to a local level. For all that we refer to ‘sovereign’ councils, no council is ‘an island, entire of itself’ and the failure of one diminishes all. When we open the LGC or MJ, to see for ‘whom the bell tolls’ we should hear the message that ‘it tolls for thee’.

Picture credit: Maggie Meng https://www.flickr.com/photos/snowfish2014/

Catherine is a researcher, consultant and coach who specialises in strengthening leadership, improving governance and supporting senior politicians and managers.  She is an independent consultant with Darlingburn, a small consultancy practice and is working with Grant Thornton on local government audit, specializing in governance. She was the Director of the Institute of Local Government Studies (INLOGOV) at the University of Birmingham from 2011 to 2017.

Local councils must work harder at enabling women to be councillors

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Picture: Haringey Council’s 2022 cabinet

Jason Lowther

Local councils can and must do more to enable women to be councillors. Haringey’s new cabinet shows that this can be done, but fifty years after all government elected officials across the UK were finally elected under universal suffrage, new research shows barely a third of local councillors and MPs are women, whereas earlier research showed less than a quarter of Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) candidates were women.   This matters not only in terms of democratic fairness, but because politicians’ characteristics impact on public policy.

The research published last week by the Fawcett Society and Democracy Club reflects councillor representation in August 2022 across the UK.  To collect the data, they had to scrape individual council websites since (incredibly) there is no official record of councillors’ gender (or other protected characteristics).  This is because the relevant section of the Equality Act 2010 has still not yet been enacted and in any case as drafted would apply only to candidates in national elections.  This is in contrast to council staff, where the Equality Act applies and has led most councils to capture and publish reasonably detailed assessments of workforce equality issues – as shown by the recent SOLACE / Shared Intelligence report, ‘Understanding and Improving Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the Local Government Workforce’ which we discussed on the blog last autumn.

The Fawcett Society / Democracy Club results show no party yet has parity of representation between women and men, but some are doing much better than others.   The highest proportion of women is found in the Labour Party (47%) and the lowest in the Conservative Party (29%), the SDLP, DUP, and Ulster Unionist Parties. 

Source: Gender representation on local councils, Fawcett Society and Democracy Club (2022)

At individual council level, the highest proportions of women councillors were found in Haringey (65%), Rossendale (61%), Brighton and Hove (56%), Lewisham (56%), and Southwark (56%).  In contrast, Perth and Kinross, Pendle, Comhairle nan Eileen Siar and West Berkshire each have 15% or less of the council made up of women councillors.

One effect of having fewer women decision makers may be that issues that disproportionately affect women are given insufficient attention.  Policymakers play key roles in promoting status-based policies.

Recent research by Professor Francesca Gains (University of Manchester) and Professor Vivien Lowndes (Inlogov) published in the journal Politics & Gender in 2021 analysed the effect of Police and Crime Commissioner’s gender on policymaking around violence against women and girls (VAWG).  An earlier quantitative phase of their research found that policy prioritisation was linked to Police and Crime Commissioners’ own gender, with female PCCs twice as likely to prioritize VAWG.  Their later research analysed how this difference occurred, identifying ‘seven sets of rules that have shaped policy prioritization in favour of VAWG: the right to make key appointments; the requirement to set policy priorities; the obligation to utilize equalities duties; the power to commit resources; the expectation of partnership working with other agencies; the commitment to hold operational police officers to account; and the maintenance of diverse channels of contact with victims of crime and the wider public’ (Gains and Lowndes, 2022, p. 396).

To improve the situation, the Fawcett Society / Democracy Club report makes recommendations to government, political parties and local councils.  For councils, the key actions are:

  • implement parental leave policies, to make being a councillor more accessible to those with caring responsibilities;
  • ensure that caring and dependency allowances reflect the real cost of childcare and are accounted for separately from ‘main’ members’ allowance;
  • pilot alternative ways of working including online and hybrid engagement mechanisms to enable councillors with caring responsibilities to carry out their duties more effectively; and
  • adopt codes of conduct, based on the model developed by the LGA in 2020

Local councils can only be truly effective when they represent the communities they serve.  The Fawcett Society report is a timely reminder that we have a long way to go, but the first steps are clear and practical.

Jason Lowther is Director of the Institute for Local Government Studies (INLOGOV), University of Birmingham

Reference

Gains, F. and Lowndes, V. (2022) ‘Identifying the institutional micro-foundations of gender policy change: A case study of police governance and violence against women and girls’, Politics & Gender, 18(2), pp. 394-421.

Thinking about the Earthquakes in Turkey: A Call for Local Democracy

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Picture: FCDO/Russell Watkins

Professor Rabia Karakaya Polat

The earthquakes that took place in Maraş province of Turkey on February 6, together with the terrible destruction they caused, also led to the questioning of state institutions and capacity. An important dimension of the subject is the relationship between central and local governments in the country. These earthquakes and what happened afterwards have been instrumental in questioning the overcentralized structure of the state in Turkey[i]. Discussions centered on why the earthquakes were so devastating[ii] as well as the inadequacies in the post-earthquake response[iii].

In Turkey, the authority to issue city planning and zoning permits belongs to the central administration. The authority to carry out urban transformation processes in existing settlements also rests with the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change, which is the relevant ministry of the central government. Therefore, the possibilities of municipalities to make cities earthquake resistant are very limited. The authorities of municipalities, such as controlling and licensing the buildings against earthquakes, are not used effectively enough.

Turkish people have witnessed that the excessively centralized structure also hindered the post-earthquake rescue efforts. It was not possible for local actors to take the initiative and act. The lack of timely mobilization of local capacity increased the loss of life. It is very important that not only local governments, but also civil society mobilize in such crises. However, there was a process in which non-governmental organizations and volunteers carrying out aid campaigns were also targeted[iv]. In a televised speech to the nation, President Erdoğan complained about critical news and declared that he planned to hold critical voices to account. Later, access to Twitter was throttled while rescue operations were still underway. The government claimed that it did so to prevent “disinformation”. Some government actors and their supporters also raised concerns about the extent to which public support and fund-raising has been directed at civil society organizations like Ahbap, rather than the government’s own relief organization, AFAD.

In fact, we have witnessed such challenges to local actors in the face of complex and multiple crises by the central government before. For example, during the coronavirus pandemic, the efforts of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality to collect aid were stopped and the donations amounting to 6.2 million liras collected in the bank accounts were confiscated and transferred to the central government bodies[v]. The 3.5 million lira aid collected by the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality was blocked. The solidarity campaigns of municipalities were evaluated by President Erdogan as “the logic of being a state within a state”[vi]. Determining the policies and practices related to the pandemic from a single center instead of being shaped according to local conditions increased the negative effects of the pandemic on the society.

Municipalities were also left alone in the refugee issue, one of the deepest crises Turkey has experienced recently. Even municipalities with a refugee population of up to a quarter of their own population did not  receive a penny of additional support from the central budget[vii]. Moreover, municipalities do not know what to do about refugees, as there is no clear legislation and coherent policy in this area. While the discourse and policy towards refugees shifts from hospitality and religious solidarity to ‘voluntary’ return, municipalities are forced to cope with this uncertainty[viii]. Despite this, they develop and implement creative and entrepreneurial projects in cooperation with civil society to meet the needs of refugees and integrate them into society[ix].

The European Charter of Local Self-Government[x], signed by Turkey in 1992, obliges the parties to implement the basic rules that guarantee the political, administrative and financial independence of local governments. Despite this Charter, which provides for the recognition of the principle of local self-government in domestic legislation and, if possible, in the constitution, trustees appointed from the center serve instead of those elected[xi]. At the local elections on March 31, 2019, the HDP (Peoples Democratic Party) won 65 municipalities in the Kurdish-majority provinces. While six of the elected mayors were not given their certificates of election, trustees were appointed by the central government to 3 metropolitan, 5 provincial, 45 district and 12 town municipalities. While the municipalities are under such tutelage in regions where Kurdish voters are concentrated, a politically motivated judicial process hangs like the sword of Damocles over the head of Ekrem İmamoğlu, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality’s elected mayor[xii].

Earthquake is one of the realities of Turkey. However, the strict centralist structure and the authoritarian regime, which further increases its negative impact, prevent local initiatives, resilience and solidarity not only in earthquakes but also in all kinds of crises that arise today. Complex crises such as pandemics, mass migration and climate change that we have faced in recent years and will face in the future are far from being problems that a single actor can deal with at a single level. It is not possible to deal with these crises without vertical cooperation between local, national and international levels of government and horizontal cooperation networks between state and non-state actors such as civil society organizations.

Although we can see the damages of over-centralized administration most clearly in times of crisis, the cost of not having resilient and participatory local government that meets local demands is much greater than we think. Local governments cannot be ‘local’ enough because they are financially dependent on the center and because of the arbitrary and partisan practices of the central government. If this earthquake is to be a start, taking big steps to strengthen local democracy should also be a part of it.

Rabia Karakaya Polat is a professor of political science at the Department of International Relations at Işık University (Istanbul). She recently completed a British Academy-funded joint research project, with Prof. Vivien Lowndes, analysing local refugee policies in Turkey. She published numerous articles in journals such as Security Dialogue, South European Society and Politics, Citizenship Studies, Parliamentary Affairs, Government Information Quarterly, Local Government Studies and Journal of Refugee Studies. Currently, she is working on refugee integration policies at the local level.

[i] Cemal Burak Tansel (2020) Reproducing Authoritarian Neoliberalism in Turkey: Urban Governance and State Restructuring in the Shadow of Executive Centralization, Authoritarian Neoliberalism, Routledge, 88-103

[ii] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/28/podcasts/the-daily/turkey-buildings-earthquake-construction.html

[iii] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/10/opinion/erdogan-turkey-earthquake.html

[iv] https://www.mei.edu/publications/turkeys-government-prioritizing-politics-over-policy-its-earthquake-response

[v] https://www.duvarenglish.com/turkish-govt-confiscated-millions-collected-for-covid-19-victims-by-istanbul-municipality-news-60396

[vi] https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2020/04/turkey-erdogan-goodness-claims-may-backfire-amid-coronavirus.html

[vii] https://inlogov.com/2021/01/08/no-powers-no-funds-how-municipalities-are-working-creatively-to-address-the-needs-of-syrian-refugees-in-turkey/

[viii] Vivien Lowndes & Rabia Karakaya Polat (2020) How do local actors interpret, enact and contest policy? An analysis of local government responses to meeting the needs of Syrian refugees in Turkey, Local Government Studies, 48:3, 546-569

[ix] Rabia Karakaya Polat & Vivien Lowndes (2022). How does multi-level governance create capacity to address refugee needs, and with what limitations? an analysis of municipal responses to Syrian refugees in Istanbul. Journal of Refugee Studies, 35(1), 51-73

[x] https://rm.coe.int/european-charter-of-local-self-government-eng/1680a87cc3

[xi] https://bianet.org/english/world/259590-council-of-europe-finds-appointment-of-trustees-in-turkey-contrary-to-international-law

[xii] https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/14/turkey-court-convicts-istanbul-mayor-ekrem-imamoglu

A Japanese view of Jeremy’s budget

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Chris Game

I had an interesting Budget week. I was part-hosting a Japanese academic colleague – Prof Toshihiko Ishihara (Kwansei Gakuin University) and his wife, Midori – making their first overseas trip since Covid. They briefly visited Birmingham, where Toshi was an erstwhile INLOGOV Associate, but were based in London, where I’d agreed to organise a theatre visit.

I’d booked tickets for a well-reviewed modern-day play, Romeo and Julie, loosely based on one of Shakespeare’s. Single-sentence synopsis: Julie – a bright, Cambridge University-bound, aspiring astrophysicist – is emotionally torn between uni and her affection for young single dad, Romeo, effectively sole carer for his baby daughter afflicted with Poonami.  

No, the Poonami doesn’t feature in Shakespeare’s version, but, researcher that I am, I’d discovered it’s a real medical thing, meaning affected babies’ sudden, massive, uncontrollable bowel movements. Better still, that etymologically Poonami derives directly from the Japanese tsunami – a sudden, volcanic, unstoppable wave. My guests were delighted – and the play too was excellent.   

The following Wednesday, however, was Budget Day – followed by the Birmingham Post’s impassioned coverage of our region’s “Power grab”, the “seismic shift in devolution as West Midland leaders take more control from Whitehall”, etc. (pp.1,7) – guaranteeing some amused but tricky questions from someone who both lives with and studies serious mayoral governance.

It was the national news headlines, though, that I was obliged to address first, and the UK’s “unsustainable … biggest since the war … tax burden” – characterised by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt as something horrendous and to be avoided, certainly by a Conservative Government, at almost any costs.

We’re not Basil Fawltys, but my Japanese friends and I tend not to mention ‘the war’ that much. Anyway, the timescale wasn’t really the issue. It was that highest-level tax forecast of 37.7% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – and yes, we do make life harder by colluding in almost invariably labelling it a “tax burden”, rather than, say, the “quality-of-life price” that the tax helps pay for.

What Toshi and other Japanese students of these things invariably query is: why the excitement/horror over a tax-to-GDP ratio currently almost identical to theirs? Yes, ours is indeed a higher ‘burden’ than those of, say, the US or Switzerland. But, as shown in the Office for Budget Responsibility’s Chart A, both we – at roughly 34% of GDP – and Japan are currently in the bottom third of “advanced economies”, and even at a forecast 37.7% we’d still be mid-table and some way BELOW both most sizeable West European countries, plus bits of Eastern Europe too.

It’s interesting. Pollsters never ask us if we prefer NOT being an ‘advanced economy’ – you know, one with fully staffed and functioning health and social services, decently funded schools, reliable public transport, etc.?  And I’m not sure how collectively we’d answer. Clearly, these things do cost money, yet we obviously like visiting these higher-taxed places for our holidays.  Not Denmark perhaps – top, with its 47% tax ‘burden’ – but France, Austria, Italy, Scandinavia, Greece, Spain, Portugal, etc.

It’s presumably at least partly these countries’ ‘quality of life’ (QoL) that attracts us – which, unsurprisingly, correlates broadly with ‘tax burden’. There are several QoL indexes, one being Numbeo’s. It’s not the most methodologically sophisticated, but it does produce nice maps, collectively summarising its measures, which include purchasing power, safety, health care, cost of living, and pollution.

Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland are currently top, scoring nearly 200 QoL points. Then the usual suspects – Finland, Iceland, Austria, Australia, New Zealand, Japan (13th) etc. – down to No.21 – UK 166.4, just ahead of Croatia. Disappointing, but could be worse – bottom at 84th is red Nigeria, not with ‘nul points’ exactly, but only 40.

The underlying, systemic problem, obviously not mentioned by Chancellor Hunt, is precisely his Department: His Majesty’s Treasury – first time I’ve typed that! – and its overbearing central funding control, currently exercised politically and communicated by him. And formerly by, among others, one George Osborne – which is where the irony starts. When Chancellor of the Exchequer, Osborne launched, and currently chairs, the Northern Powerhouse Partnership (NPP) – self-described as “the leading voice of business and civic leaders across the North”.

And currently a very shouty voice. For, within days of Hunt’s Budget pronouncements, along came Osborne with his NPP ‘wrecking ball’ – a clumsily titled but potentially headline-making report: Fiscal DevoNation – The Blueprint for How to Devolve Tax to the Regions of England. The Treasury, he and his Powerhouse chums now reckon – and as local government has complained for years – far from being the provider of solutions, is itself the problem. Its voice is the overwhelmingly dominant one in what Osborne nowadays sees as a damagingly over-centralised fiscal system. Just like when he was boss.

The NPP’s solutions involve, at least eventually, full-scale fiscal devolution. The “most unfair” council tax – with its outdated property values – stamp duty (paid on purchasing residential property), and business rates should all go, eliminating the Treasury’s all-powerful role altogether. The at least eventual replacement, following a comprehensive revaluation of all homes, would be a locally set land value tax, plus three new council tax ‘super bands’ for the most valuable properties, with revenue to be shared across the country.

Yep – that’s radical, but there’s more – like the localised hotel tax that numerous other countries already have, which NPP reckons could raise an annual £5.5 millions for the Lake District alone.

But I digress – from what my Japanese visitors really wanted to talk about: that Budget highlight of a “seismic shift” in devolution, to the West Midlands and Greater Manchester regions, and their elected Mayors, Andys Street and Burnham, who will get new multi-year devolution funding deals, and be allowed to retain business rates – to be followed by further such agreements across England.

At the time of writing, there hadn’t been a direct response from Northern Powerhouse as to how far down the ‘full-scale fiscal devolution’ road this might take us. As for a Japanese reaction, well, this blog is already overlong; but their response would probably start with the country’s written constitution, and the local government chapter guaranteeing its role and “the principle of local autonomy”. It’s an ultra-crude summary, but basically the national state does currency, diplomacy and defence, and pretty much everything else is left to the 47 prefectures and 1,700 or so municipalities. And heading those municipalities … directly elected mayors!

As the American phrase puts it: ‘Way to go’ – in both senses.  

_____________________

This is an adapted version of an article that appeared in the March 23rd edition of the Birmingham Post.

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.

Forging an alliance with the NHS

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Cllr Ketan Sheth

If local councils and the NHS do not work together as trusted equal partners, our residents are the ones that lose out.

In Brent, our local communities were among those most affected by the first and second waves of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the local hospital, Northwick Park, making the national headlines having been caught in the eye of the storm, which acutely demonstrated the terrible impact of health inequalities on real lives.

We are, of course, particularly reliant on our NHS partners to provide emergency services, planned elective care, and a full and complex mix of outpatient and specialist services, including mental health and community services.

Likewise, NHS staff are reliant on local councils (and other local partners) playing their part in delivering a seamless patient pathway, that can go from a first GP visit right through to a tailored social care package.

Delivering high quality, equitable health services take detailed planning and a solid grasp on the needs of local communities.

In Brent, we have seen increasing levels of partnership working with the local NHS trust. Collaboration is made easier because London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust (LNWH) shows a refreshingly genuine commitment to gaining a deep appreciation of the views, concerns, and perspectives of our local populations. This is reflected in the development of the trust’s new five-year strategy. 

In addition to undertaking vast analysis of public health, demographic and other data relating to our communities, LNWH sought engagement right from the start. The trust co-created a strategy with the help of almost 900 local community members and 40 representatives from local authority and partner organisations. Over 2,300 staff also contributed, many of who live locally and reflect the diverse population of our local communities and are frontline NHS staff who know all too well the importance of good partnership working.

I hosted one of the open forums for the trust where the local residents had an opportunity to say what they felt should be the trust’s priorities. Working in partnership with local communities and improving the quality of care came out as key themes.

This is not surprising. In Brent, our communities experience significant health inequalities when compared with regional and national levels. Local councils like Brent can only provide so much support to address these issues, so we must work with NHS partners to combat health inequalities right across our health and social care system. Indeed, we are now seeing an increased trust present at place-based and neighbourhood meetings.

One of the biggest challenges facing LNWH is the level of emergency activity. As a local council, we must work collaboratively to address systemic issues like this that the trust cannot resolve alone. Indeed, the emergency pathway is a key touchpoint for the most deprived people in Brent and partnership working presents us with a real opportunity to connect them earlier with more appropriate support in the community.

The trust’s discharge processes are perhaps the most reliant on partnership working — the NHS isn’t just its hospitals. It’s vital that we work collaboratively across organisations — the rest of the local NHS like GPs, district nursing, mental health and social care — to help the trust improve the flow of patients through its hospitals.

LNWH has called its new five-year strategy ‘Our Way Forward’. It sets out a welcome commitment to local authorities, communities, and people. We must take joint responsibility for Our Way Forward, because by working together we will forge a far better health outcomes for our residents than we can alone.

Cllr Ketan Sheth is Chair of North West London Join Health Scrutiny Committee

Mission Possible? 

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Jason Lowther

With under 700 days to the next UK general election, political parties are busy developing their manifesto documents.  In February, Labour leader Keir Starmer made a major speech laying out his “five missions for a better Britain”.   How do these five missions relate to local government?  And is the turn to “mission driven” government likely to work?

The five missions vary in their level of specificity and challenge.  Securing “the highest sustained growth in the G7, with good jobs and productivity growth in every part of the country…” is a little vague but likely to be difficult, especially given we are currently ranked 6 out of 7 in terms of output per worker.  Mission #2, “make Britain a clean energy superpower”, accelerating the move to zero-carbon electricity from 2035 to 2030, is specific but very challenging.  Mission #3, reform of health and social care and reducing health inequalities, will require a re-focus from secondary (hospital) care to social care and addressing the social determinants of health.  Mission #4 is about community safety, and likely to involve more community policing.  Finally, mission #5 is to “break down the barriers to opportunity at every stage” through reform to the childcare and education systems.

Local government potentially has important roles in each of the five missions.  Local education, skills and economic development functions will be critical to improving productivity.  On energy, Net Zero requires at least a doubling of electricity generation by 2050, from decarbonised sources.  Decarbonisation strategies need to be place-based, taking account of the geography, building types, energy infrastructure, energy demand, resources and urban growth plans.   We’ve recently argued here for the key roles of councils in this area. 

Turning to health and care services, local government clearly has leading roles – including ensuring place-based planning to address the social and behavioural causes of health inequalities.  Analysis by the Liverpool and Lancaster Universities Collaboration for Public Health Research in 2021 concluded: “investment across the whole of local government is needed to level up health including investment in housing, children’s, leisure, cultural, environmental, and planning services”.  Similarly community safety, child care and education are areas where local government could be enabled to have much greater positive impact.

Perhaps as important as the specific “missions” is the approach to governing which the party is proposing.   Labour’s document characterises this as a move from top-down, target-led, short-term, siloed approaches, to government which is more “agile, empowering and catalytic”, working across the public and private sectors, and civil society.  This, it argues, requires organising government around a shared vision, focusing on real world outcomes, concentrating on ends with flexibility and innovation concerning means, devolving decision making from Westminster, increasing accountability including central and local data transparency, and adopting long-term preventative approaches including greater financial certainty for local areas. 

In some ways the idea of mission-driven government echoes the 1990s thinking of Ted Gaebler and David Osborne’s book “reinventing government”, which argued for a more entrepreneurial approach to the delivery of government.  Their work pointed to entrepreneurial companies setting overall missions and goals, and then leaving managers to figure out how best to deliver these – for example, by providing an overall budget for a service rather than detailed line-by-line budgets which disappear if not spent by year end.  The focus on managers rather than considering the perspective of politicians is one of the problems identified in subsequent evaluations of the reinventing government model, together with difficulties in sustaining the approach.

Mission-driven policies addressing ‘grand challenges’ of society are increasingly common, for example in the UN Sustainable Development Goals and various EU policies.  Mazzucato et al recently argued that addressing such challenges requires strategic thinking about: the desired direction of travel, the structure and capacity of public sector organisations, the way in which policy is assessed, and the incentive structure for the private, public (and I would add community) sectors. Labour’s paper makes a start (albeit at a very high level) on thinking through these areas. The litmus test, though, will be in developing the detail and how far this engages with local areas.   

Over the next few months, we will be contributing to the debate on the upcoming party manifestos with some research-informed thoughts on a variety of local government related policy areas.  If you would like to be involved in developing these, please get in touch. 

Jason Lowther is the Director of INLOGOV. His research focuses on public service reform and the use of “evidence” by public agencies.  Previously he worked with West Midlands Combined Authority, led Birmingham City Council’s corporate strategy function, worked for the Audit Commission as national value for money lead, for HSBC in credit and risk management, and for the Metropolitan Police as an internal management consultant. He tweets as @jasonlowther

Picture credit: BBC