Skills? What Skills!

23/11/201523/11/2015 / inlogov / 1 Comment

Maximilian Lempriere

At a workshop hosted in early November by City-REDI, INLOGOV,The Public Services Academy at the University of Birmingham practitioners and academics from the world of local government came together to share experiences on the current Combined Authorities and city-region devolution agenda. In the second of a series of posts Max Lempriere, a doctoral researcher studying the formation of combined authorities, reflects on the days major talking points. This blog is also posted on www.lgnk.org.

One recurring theme that stood out in our discussions on potential problems with establishing effective systems of leadership and governance for Combined Authorities and mayors was the integral role that the mayor needs to play to develop and maintain collective and collaborative models of leadership. Previously in this series of posts we saw that the mayor needs to tread carefully to neuter clashes of identity, but their skill-set needs to extend far wider.

First, they need diplomatic skills. They will need to tread a careful path between council Leaders and Chief Executives. Leaders in particular are used to having the last say over key policy and political decisions affecting their areas. It isn’t overly cynical therefore to expect that the arrival of a new (directly elected) kid on the block is bound to cause additional tensions. Many of the mayors will be ‘independents’ free of the constraints and pressures resulting from the need to balance conflicting views within the group and the council. Even if mayor and combined authority leaders represent the same political party this isn’t enough to guarantee congruence of visions and policies. If the mayor has a different vision to the existing Leaders members it is unclear how this tension will be reconciled. Importantly, he or she will need to rely on the support of constituent council Leaders for approval of the budget, meaning that unless internal unity can be achieved the mayor may prove to be somewhat of a lame duck.

Second, they need a thick skin. Osborne’s idea is that mayors act as a single point of accountability for both local citizens and central government officials. The logic behind this is commendable, but it may leave the mayor between a rock and a hard place. Central government (and in particular the Treasury) has made it clear in the various devo-agreements that central oversight is built into the governance arrangements, so there may well be pressures for arms-length control of combined authorities through the mayor. Yet their allegiances lie with the combined authority; can they please both at once? Unlikely. Will this leave them open to criticism from either side? Probably.

Third, they need to be electable. Ultimately it is down to voters to decide whether or not to keep the mayor in a job, so they need to work hard to keep the public on board. Will this be possible? One danger is an expectations gap amongst voters, who misunderstand what falls inside and outside the mayor’s legislative remit. What’s more, the mayor as an institution doesn’t yet garner widespread public support, meaning that any attempted power-grabs are likely to be fiercely resisted. Similarly, it is likely that whenever the combined authority is seen to falter the mayor will be in the firing line, regardless of whether it was central government, Combined Authority members or the mayor themselves that are strictly to blame. The mayor is designed to be the accountable figurehead of the authority, but they should be careful not to oversell themselves or raise voter expectations. Without public support they lack legitimacy, without legitimacy the mayor cannot lead the combined authority and without effective leadership the combined authority is weakened.

The list goes on, but the point is simple: the mayor will have to foster internal political coherence, legitimize both themselves and the authority and be accountable both downwards and upwards. Quite how difficult these tasks will be to achieve depends on the particular power arrangements in place across different Combined Authorities and how much power has been given to elected-mayors. Nevertheless, if done right they can act as a strong figurehead for the new authorities, bringing together constituent members and powers to create something bigger than the sum of its parts and that is both resilient and durable over time. If done badly we could have a combined authority lacking in legitimacy, a vilified public figure that further disengages people away from politics and a prolonged exercise in blame shifting.

Because of the novelty of the metro-mayor and combined authority arrangements no one really knows what to expect. This could be perceived as a risk. Indeed in some areas, notably Yorkshire, disagreements at the outset over power sharing between the Combined Authority and Mayor have derailed plans.

However, it should also be seen as an opportunity. We should hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

This series of workshops is being supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, Local Government Association and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE) and is led by Catherine Staite, Director of INLOGOV and SOLACE’s Research Facilitator for Local Government.

lempriere

Max Lempriere is a final year PhD researcher at the University of Birmingham. His research interests include flexible institutional design, local government policy making, the politics of sustainable planning and construction and ecological modernisation.

Is commercialism the answer? If so, what is the question?

19/11/2015 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Catherine Staite, Director of INLOGOV

I often hear local government compared unfavourably with business, often by members who have had careers in business or industry. However, when I ask where they worked – they almost invariably name companies that are now defunct. That makes me wonder if local government deserves this unfavourable comparison. That’s before I ponder the notable probity of the banks, the honesty of VW and the reliability of Cross Country Trains.

Commercialism is a loose term, covering everything from trading activities to the skills to commission, procure, manage markets and deliver services through complex contracts. There also seem to be a number of implicit underlying meanings, including ‘entrepreneurial’ as in ‘risk taking’ and ‘tough’ as in ‘winner takes all’. Those perceived meanings strike me as both very masculine and very old-fashioned.

Commercialism, however it is understood, is not a guarantee of success. In fact, the wholesale importation of now discredited low cost/low effectiveness models of service from the private sector have actually generated failure demand.

So why do so many commenters think that increased commercialisation of local government’s functions or the acquisition of stronger hard and soft commercial skills is so necessary? There are usually two key reasons; the need for agility in a time of rapid change and to maximize resources in a time of austerity.

Every book on local government that I have ever read, regardless of when it was published, starts with a statement about the turbulence and unprecedented change being experienced by local government at that time. That does demonstrate that everything is relative. Was there ever a time when local authorities were like stately galleons, built for stability not speed, breasting the waves, largely unmoved by external pressures or internal dissent, with the cry of ‘steady as she goes’ echoing through the corridors?

If that was ever the case it certainly isn’t true now. Now many local authorities seem more like racing yachts – ploughing through stormy seas, with small crews and all hands on deck. Many are agile, resilient and efficient with some truly excellent skippers who are tacking in response to current pressures while maintaining a clear view of where they are headed. INLOGOV’s study for Grant Thornton in 2014 highlighted the significant differences between local authorities in terms of their likely financial futures, even after taking account of the inequities of local government finance. The difference between the most and least agile isn’t a reflection of varying degrees of commercialism. It’s much more fundamental than that. The best are distinguished by mature relationships between political and managerial leadership, with shared understanding of risks and opportunities that enable difficult choices to be made without blowing the authority off course.

The importance of trust and a new set of skills and attributes, in order to maximize resources, is becoming ever clearer, as demonstrated by INLOGOV’s study ‘The 21^st Century Public Servant’ which highlighted the importance of ‘municipal entrepreneurs’. Their role is about a lot more than commercialism. It is more about creativity working with agility while never losing sight of fundamental purpose of public services and retaining all the ethical underpinnings of stewardship. Our study for DCN on ‘New Ways of Working’ demonstrates that toughness and the short-term pursuit of financial gain don’t bring success, selflessness does.

Mature relationships and 21^st century skills are now forming the foundations of Combined Authorities and underpinning ‘devo deals’. The potential gains are likely to be of an entirely different order of magnitude than those achievable through mere commercialism.

Catherine Staite

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.

Do Danes co-produce? Yes, we do! And we do it in other ways than the British, as far as I can see.

15/11/201515/11/2015 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Anne Tortzen

Here is a Danish success story about co-production. It involves cycling, of course, as we are discussing Denmark!

I am a Dane, currently based at INLOGOV as a visiting PhD student. I am working on a thesis on co-production in Danish municipalities, and I am getting increasingly challenged by this seemingly ambiguous, slippery and magic concept that is co-production. Is co-production a panacea to democratize and improve public services or is it just a concept invented to ‘sugar coat’ savage cuts in public spending by shifting responsibilities on to citizens? Or is it, for that matter, something in between?

At its core co-production is about active citizens, communities and governments working together to create better outcomes of public services. And I believe that to go on believing in the possibility of this, we must tell the stories of the successes.

So here is a success story about how Danes co-produce. It is about a project called ‘Cycling for all ages’, the core idea of which is that everybody – regardless of age and health – should be entitled to get ‘around and about’ on a bicycle and feel the ‘wind in their hair’. In more conventional terms it is about improving the quality of life of older and disabled people – and improving relationships and fostering friendship across people of different age groups.

So, the essence of the co-production initiative is this: Volunteer ‘pilots’ offer free rides on bicycle rickshaws (funded by the local council) to older and disabled people, who have difficulties getting around – or who would just like some new company and inspiration. The initiative started in Copenhagen four years ago and is now running in more than 60 Danish municipalities with a total of 2500 volunteer ‘pilots’.

The initiative was started in Copenhagen by an ‘ordinary’, but quite entrepreneurial citizen, Ole. At the time he was living close to care home in a residential part of Copenhagen and was observing the inhabitants in wheelchairs being pushed around the block. So the idea struck him: Why not give these inhabitants the opportunity of seeing more of the city? Ole, himself, is a keen cyclist. So he hired a bicycle rickshaw and knocked on the door of the care home, asked to speak to the manager and offered his bicycle services. And this is exactly the defining moment of the co-production process: How does a public servant respond to a citizen initiative such as this? As a bureaucrat thinking about the risks and hassle of the whole endeavor – or with trust and appreciation of an active citizen wanting to contribute? Fortunately, Ole got the latter reaction – and that, I think, tells us that the most important ingredient in successful co-production is trust!

So in which sense is this co-production? I would argue, that we are talking about ‘co-produced design and production of welfare services that enhance the quality of life’ made possible through contributions from care workers and councillors, active citizens and the older ‘service users’ themselves in the following way: The local councillors allocate means for buying one or more bicycle rickshaws and maintaining them. The care workers contribute by promoting the bicycle activity to the older people and assisting Tom in getting ready for his trip. Sometimes the care workers also volunteer to drive the bicycle. Volunteers of all ages (the youngest is only 12) and origins contribute as ‘pilots’ riding the bicycles and taking care of the planning and coordination of trips and of recruiting more volunteers – all via Facebook (check out 12-year-old Christian’s short clip by clicking here). And finally, Tom co-produces his own welfare service by deciding where he wants to go on the trip and what stories about his life he would like to share on the way. And he gets an immense boost in life quality out of it – as is obvious from this film about Torkild, aged 92, on a nostalgic trip through Copenhagen with Ole as his ‘pilot’.

It may or may not be, that this ‘additive’ co-produced service to the elderly saves public expenditure in the long run – but it surely does bring about quality of life and social capital. And that, I think, is the best we can hope for from co-production.

PS: The success story is no longer solely Danish. The concept of Cycling without age has gone international – just like the Danish TV series Borgen and The Killing – and is now taking off in more countries all over the world.

Anne Tortzen is based at the University of Roskilde, Denmark. Alongside the PhD she works as a consultant on citizen engagement and co-production. Anne is the founder and director of Centre for Citizen Dialogue, which specializes in consulting with Danish and Nordic municipalities, ministries and institutions to develop citizen engagement in public policy and services.

‘If the rules aren’t written, you can write your own’ – Flexibility, Elected Mayors and Combined Authorities

10/11/201510/11/2015 / inlogov / Leave a comment

Max Lempriere

At the first of a series of workshops hosted in early November by the College of Social Sciences at the University of Birmingham, with input from INLOGOV, The Public Services Academy and City-REDI, practitioners and academics from the world of local government came together to share experiences on the current combined authorities and city-region devolution agenda. In the first of a series of posts Max Lempriere, a doctoral researcher studying the formation of combined authorities, reflects on the day’s major talking points.

Combined authorities are emerging as the arrangement of choice for local authorities across England keen to harness greater powers and funding from central government. Five have so far been established with another six in the pipeline. More will follow in the coming months and years.

One of the clearest challenges coming out of our discussion is that there is no ‘blueprint’ to follow in their design. It is up to each prospective combined authority to ‘bid’ for a package of powers and funding that reflects local needs and priorities in negotiation with central government. But what does this mean for those on the ground involved in those deliberations?

Underlying much of the discussion was an optimism that this kind of flexibility presents. One participant remarked ‘if the rules aren’t written, you can write your own’. But, accompanying this was also a frustration at the ambiguity and uncertainty that accompanies this kind of design flexibility. The need to ensure public value, a resilient institutional arrangement and a design that can achieve specific foundational objectives certainly raises the stakes.

Take the issue of elected-mayors. Agreeing to adopt an elected mayor is a necessary condition to achieving the full range of powers and funding available, but again there is flexibility in terms of what powers and competencies the mayor will have. If nothing else the mayor will become the figurehead of the combined authority, so a lot rests on ensuring their success.

There is a danger that if not carefully thought through the ‘mayor issue’ could undermine the success or resilience of the combined authority. A functional economic geography may be an appropriate basis from which local authorities can come together but the congruence of economic and political geographies is not a given. Participants agreed that the powers and ‘design’ of the mayoralty must be carefully negotiated to reflect local identities, political priorities and political geographies. Take the West Midlands, for example. Here the development of a combined authority has to navigate the deep historical tensions between Birmingham, the Black Country, and Solihull/Coventry. Would a mayor be able to negotiate these differences? Would any attempts to do so be met with hostility and, if so, what would that mean for the legitimacy of the mayor? Several participants at our workshop were concerned that if the mayor was to be seen as ineffective there is a danger that the whole combined authority could be at stake.

So what does this mean for combined authority designers? The most obvious conclusion is that local authorities need to be leading the discussions, not central government. In the words of one participant, local authorities need to be ‘feisty’ in their negotiations and unafraid to ‘flex their muscles’. There isn’t a comprehensive deal without an elected mayor and there isn’t a combined authority without an effective mayor. How the mayor is presented, engaged with and positioned within the combined authority is more fluid and contingent than a set of formal powers suggests. Combined authorities should not rest on their laurels and assume that just because their mayor ‘works’ today it will do so tomorrow.

So should we write off their potential? Far from it! There are real, tangible opportunities to seize back control from central government. Everyone involved must be sensitive to both the enormous opportunities this presents but also the potential pitfalls of flexible, negotiable institutional design.

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.

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