Is Public Safety Being Compromised by Budget Cuts in Local Authority Trading Standards?

/ Abena Dadze-Arthur / Leave a comment

John Raine, Professor of Management in Criminal Justice

Some of the most severe effects of financial austerity of recent years have been borne by local authority trading standards departments.  In a recent survey of such departments, and out of a sample of sixty-one respondents, ten reported having experienced budgets cuts of more than a third in the past four years, and one by more than 50%.  Almost all departments have shed staff by significant margins, and most now operate with less than half as many people as they employed a decade or so ago.  And it seems that more cuts are yet to come.

Of course these are hard times for the public sector as a whole and for almost every department and agency involved.  But how fair and sensible have been the cuts to trading standards departments?  To what extent might their apparent severity reflect the perceived lesser priority, smaller scale or lower public profile of trading standards compared with, say, children’s services, adult social care, highways and other such functions of local government.  Or to what extent are the large-scale cuts simply indicative of more limited understanding among councillor decision-making bodies of the nature and value of trading standards work?  Indeed, how well-informed and how carefully justified have the budget cut decisions that have already been taken?  Most important, to what extent were they based on an appreciation of the actual and potential impact on public safety and protection?

Earlier this year, a team of three from INLOGOV completed a major research commission for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Trading Standards Institute (TSI) examining these questions.  From that research three key findings and conclusions seem especially relevant here.

A weakened public profile

Too few members of the public are aware of the existence of local authority trading standards departments, let alone of the specific functions and roles undertaken within them.  Whatever public image does persist about trading standards, it is surely dominated by traditional perceptions about ‘weights and measures’; of inspectors checking the accuracy of the pumps on the garage forecourts, of the green grocer’s scales and of the accuracy and clarity of content descriptions and sell-by dates on foods products on the supermarket shelves.  But in reality this is just a small part of the contemporary portfolio of activities under the banner of ‘trading standards’.

In the past, the local trading standards department was the place where consumers often took their problems and complaints to seek advice and assistance in gaining redress from traders with whom they were dissatisfied.  But these days that first line point of call for consumer complaints has moved from local authorities to a nationally-established Citizens’ Advice Consumer Service (CACS).  Only if an individual case is subsequently referred to the local trading standards department by CACS might a member of the public come into contact with their local trading standards officers – so inevitably the profile and significance in the public consciousness of the function will have been much reduced.

At the same time, many other proactive and community-oriented/public protection-type initiatives of trading standards departments, such as the designation and regulation of Cold Calling Control Zones (to deter rogue traders and doorstep crime), and the operation of Trusted Traders/Buy with Confidence schemes (i.e. producing lists of local ‘approved’ builders for housing repairs or of recognised second hand car dealers) tend not to be as widely publicised or promoted as they might.

Furthermore, the development since 2000 of cabinet and executive governance structures in local authorities, and the move to fewer but larger service directorates, has also served to lower the profile of trading standards and to distance the work from most councillors.  This is because the function now tends to be located in conjunction with a wider set of functions such as public health or regulatory services as a whole, and trading standards departments no longer report to their own particular committee.  They are similarly that much more removed from the key political and corporate arenas where budget decision-making takes place, and chief trading standards officers, who are typically now third tier appointees, probably have less influence in such decision-making settings too.

Insufficient Commitment to Collaborative Working

Trading standards departments are generally more involved in partnership-working than in the past – several now operating with shared service arrangements with near neighbours; all doing more together at regional levels; and most also working in closer collaboration with the police and other regulatory agencies.  However, there remains much unexploited scope for addressing the budgetary pressures through more sharing of resources and joint working.  This is particularly the case in relation to activities that require expensive equipment or extensive space requirements (e.g. metrology equipment and other laboratory testing work).  Reluctance to surrender control (for good and less good reasons, and whether on the part of the local politicians or by officials), has been a key obstacle to more sharing of services or other collaborations, and indeed to more efficient and effective working.  Most departments, as a result, are now operating with very limited resilience, doing what they can to maintain standards and enforce compliance, but with their limited resources spread very thinly indeed.

The work of most departments these days is also now more reactive than proactive in nature – driven particularly by intelligence reports and complaints rather than, as in the past, by schedules of planned inspections to monitor and enforce standards.  Inevitably this must have increased the risks of safety problems and other non-compliance issues arising, and of potential detriment and harm to consumers.  However, hard evidence as to the extent of such effects was found in the research to be mostly anecdotal or intuitive.

A Paucity of Outcome and Impact Data

More than anything, the research has highlighted the paucity of quantitative data available by which to understand the current outcomes and impact of trading standards interventions and particularly the effects of local authority budget cuts in these respects.  While there is mostly good information on the financial value of remedies achieved through trading standards officer interventions on behalf of complainants, the research found little available data on the non-financial benefits of trading standards work.  Furthermore still less was apparent on the value of proactive and preventative activity, for instance, the work to enforce the law on under-age sales, to deter doorstep crime, and to identify and pursue non-compliant trading via Facebook and other web-sites.  For sure, the task of devising measures of outcomes and impact represents a considerable challenge; especially so in relation to potential problems (i.e. ones that have not actually arisen because of the proactivity of trading standards officers).  However, a key recommendation from the research is for a national project to be undertaken to develop an appropriate framework of quantitative outcome measures and of more qualitative impact indicators.  The argument for this is simple enough.  Only through the compilation and presentation of such information can trading standards departments reasonably justify their current budgets and resist the pressure further cuts.  Who knows?  With better outcome and impact data, perhaps some budget restoration might be a reasonable expectation.

Research Report ‘The Impact of Local Authority Trading Standards in Challenging Times’ by John Raine, Catherine Mangan and Peter Watt, INLOGOV, University of Birmingham, was published in March 2015 jointly by BIS and TSI and can be downloaded at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-authority-trading-standards-a-review

raine

John Raine has been an academic member of staff at the Institute of Local Government Studies since 1979, during which time he has served two terms as Director as well as Director of Postgraduate Research, and Director of Postgraduate Studies. He was founder director of the University’s brand-leading Public Service MBA programme and of the MSc in Public Management.

Oh dear… I’m wrong again!

/ Abena Dadze-Arthur / Leave a comment

Catherine Staite, Director of INLOGOV

When the Devolution/Combined Authority agenda began to gather momentum after the election I saw two key opportunities for local government; to achieve the practical benefits of operating at the right scale to deliver big ticket change and to improve collaboration by drawing in reluctant partners.  Central government’s insistence on ‘metro mayors’ as part of the deal seemed less of an impediment once Greater Manchester had shrugged and said ‘oh, alright then’.  Ever the optimist, I foresaw a range of CA’s operating at different scales and across varied geographies, receiving different devolution deals. How could I have been so self-deluded to imaging that anything so sensible would come to fruition?

So many things – big and small – get in the way.  Osborne’s big ambition is to regain some influence in the cities, particularly in the North, so why would he bother with those untidy two-tier county areas and sub regions riven by petty rivalries?  The success of Cornwall is the exception that proves the rule. It’s both a unitary, which makes it easy for central government to engage with, and chronically deprived so clearly something must be done.

Central government now lacks the skills and capacity to co-produce strong CA arrangements and negotiate more than a handful of effective devolution deals with local government. BIS, DCLG and the Treasury have all poked the CA proposals with their own particular sticks but a few junior civil servants nitpicking their way through agreements that have been hammered out by some of the big beasts of local government, who actually know what they are talking about, doesn’t add much value.

Now the door is closing. If nascent CAs haven’t already ticked all the boxes, it’s too late now.  Even those that looked as if they would make the grade may find they are operating at too small a scale and rapid agglomeration will be the only way to achieve their ambitions – but that’s a big challenge. An East Midlands CA would in involve 47 leaders and nearly as many chief executives – not an optimal number for strategic decision-making.

The small scale and diversity of much of local government, particularly in two tier areas, brings some advantages at a local level but creates enormous barriers to collective action. Local government still struggles to act in concert, to create a strong united front and operate at the right scale.    The reasons for that are many and varied but the three that I observe most frequently can be summed up as deficits in ambition, capacity and diplomacy. Why would a successful district leader reach for a big prize for their region but risk their authority within their group by  appearing to help their rival neighbours?  Local authorities have lost so much capacity – who will do the leg-work to make sense of so much complexity?  How can people who’ve made it their political life’s work to be disagreeable to each other, about matters of mind-numbing triviality, suddenly develop the necessary diplomatic skills to develop a convincing collective narrative?

There are a number of ways local government could overcome those deficits. They could support each other to be collectively more ambitious, they could pool their resources to fill capacity gaps by buying in expertise in the short term and they could set the bar for behaviour a bit higher so that gratuitous vileness becomes  as unacceptable as spitting on the carpet.  Well – it looks like they’ve got four years to do it.  If they don’t, perhaps their residents might feel poorly served when they miss out on the benefits of growth because their local leaders lack the will or the skill to collaborate.

 

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.

Combined Authorities – Why Birmingham doesn’t have a city region like Leeds

/ Chris Game

Chris Game.

“Cornwall leapfrogs West Midlands in devolution race” was the headline over one report of the Government’s recent devolution deal with Cornwall Council, giving the county greater control over adult skills spending and regional investment, and, with the Isles of Scilly, the prospect of integrating health and social care services.

For a West Midlands resident it seemed a depressing message – almost depressing enough to make one contemplate shooting the messenger. However, I happen to know him, so I’ve settled for shooting his metaphor, and in doing so providing a further update of events that could bring what I described in a previous blog as the most significant power-shift in English government in generations.

First thing to concede is that, predictably from this wholly centralist and Osborne-choreographed devolution exercise, it absolutely is set up as a race – certainly against time. It was outlined on p.63 of the Summer Budget’s Red Book:

“To fulfil its commitment to rebalance the economy and further strengthen the Northern Powerhouse, the government is working towards further devolution deals with the Sheffield City Region, Liverpool City Region, and Leeds, West Yorkshire and partner authorities, to be agreed in parallel with the Spending Review.”

We’ll return to the detailed wording later. The point here, apart from the redundant reminder of the Chancellor’s tunnel-visioned insistence on an elected mayor as the only acceptable accountability mechanism, is the Spending Review deadline, repeated a few paragraphs later:

“The government remains open to any further proposals from local areas for devolution of significant powers in return for a mayor, in time for conclusion ahead of the Spending Review.”

This week, a fortnight after the Budget and just seven summer holiday weeks before his chosen submission deadline, the Chancellor realized it would be useful for others to know the relevant Spending Review dates. Its conclusions, we learned, will be outlined on 25 November. But deal-seeking councils need to check p.15 of another Treasury document:

“City regions that want to agree a devolution deal in return for a mayor by the Spending Review need to submit formal, fiscally neutral proposals and an agreed geography to the Treasury by 4 September 2015.”

Numerous race analogies suggest themselves – obstacle, hurdle, handicap – but I see the devolution race less as a single race and more like the London Marathon – several races taking place simultaneously with different categories of participants starting off from different places at different times.

Take Cornwall. As the first rural council to negotiate a devolution deal, it clearly deserves credit, and doubtless its methods are being studied closely by other counties rushing to recruit partners and submit bids by the Chancellor’s deadline.

These county areas, though, are effectively in a different race from the big city regions. Their bids will vary greatly, in scale and aspiration, and in London Marathon terms their equivalents are perhaps the ‘Good for Age’ racers, who secure guaranteed entry by running a specified time considered good for their age group. They’ll hopefully win the appreciation of their friends and residents, but the big prizes will inevitably go to the Elite runners, the 150 miles a week guys, who need a certified 2 hours 20 time just to qualify, and sub-2 hours 10 to get into the serious prize money.

In the devolution race there’s only one elite entrant even to have glimpsed serious fiscal devolution-type money – Greater Manchester. The region starts with natural advantages, with its geographical and political coherence, and its 10-council team of runners was first out of the blocks in 2011, in applying to become the first Combined Authority (CA).

Moreover, they run as a team, agreeing to accept the race sponsor’s favoured elected mayor along with all that devolved funding, and now the prize money keeps arriving on a regular basis – most recently on Budget Day, when they won £30 million funding for ‘Transport for the North’ plus control of the fire service, Land Commission, children’s services and employment programmes.

Following the elite runners in the London Marathon are the Championship entrants – registered members of an athletics club, with a certified 2 hours 45 race time. The devolution equivalent is the exclusive Combined Authority club – still just the five members, those joining Greater Manchester being, to give them their official names, West Yorkshire, the North East, and the Sheffield and Liverpool City Regions.

West Yorkshire, Sheffield and Liverpool are actual or, in Liverpool’s case, near reincarnations of the areas’ 1972-86 metropolitan counties, and in that sense similar to Greater Manchester. The North East CA is different – hugely bigger than the former Tyne & Wear met county, but having at least the coherence of covering the same area as the North-East Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP).

As we have seen, the three former met county CAs were all name-checked by George Osborne in his Summer Budget speech – though few seemed to notice the precise names he used: “the Sheffield and Liverpool City Regions and Leeds, West Yorkshire and partner authorities” (my emphasis).

Having undertaken a serious resident and stakeholder consultation exercise back in March, North East leaders were rather peeved not to have made Osborne’s list. Since then, though, they’ve moved fast – not exactly embracing, but at least dropping their outright opposition to, an elected mayor, and opening talks on a “radical devolution deal” with Communities Secretary Greg Clark.

Temporarily at least, therefore, this might seem to put them ahead of Sheffield and Liverpool, but what exactly is happening in West Yorkshire? How is Leeds – unlike Birmingham, which has to make what noise it can under the ‘West Midlands’ banner – apparently managing to retain its nominal identity in its devolution deal?

Prior to the election, it was assumed that big city devolution deals would be negotiated with, where they existed, Combined Authorities. But then, in late June, Greg Clark delivered his remarkable eulogy to LEPs. These partnerships between business and councils were evaluated recently by the Royal Town Planning Institute as having “an opaque remit”, lacking “firm institutional foundations”, and being overly responsive to central government direction. In the new minister’s view, however, they represent:

“a phenomenal revolution [that has] completely changed the way investment and growth is done in this country. The areas that combined authorities are now following are the same areas defined by LEPs as being the true economic geography of our nation. As such, no devolution deal will be signed off unless it is absolutely clear that the LEPs will be at the heart of arrangements” (my emphasis).

Anyway, whoever’s verdict you prefer, LEPs are where Leeds City Region comes in. A city region is an economists’ and planners’ term to describe the functional region around a city – its ‘true economic geography’, as Greg Clark might put it. The label dates back at least to Derek Senior’s Memorandum of Dissent in the 1969 Redcliffe-Maud Report. But institutionally not much happened until the arrival in the late-2000s of Multi-Area Agreements (MAAs) – voluntary agreements between a number of local authorities and the government to work collectively to improve local economic prosperity.

There were eventually 15 of them. Of the big cities, those for Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire, Liverpool, and Tyne & Wear took the forms their respective CAs now do. But, instead of West Yorkshire, there was Leeds City Region, as shown in the accompanying map: the five former West Yorkshire metropolitan county boroughs, plus Barnsley from South Yorkshire, and Craven, Harrogate, York and Selby from North Yorkshire.

Leeds 1

MAAs were formally wound up by the incoming Coalition, but in practice most, like Leeds City Region’s, accompanied their authorities into their new LEPs. Which explains why West Yorkshire’s devolution bid is focused, as the Chancellor convolutedly but correctly described, on ‘Leeds, West Yorkshire and partner authorities’, or, more succinctly, Leeds City Region.

Not surprisingly, Birmingham also had a Multi-Area Agreement and a city region partnership, but in its case the emphasis is firmly on the past tense. It went under the catchy name of the Birmingham, Black Country and Coventry City Region and produced, among other things, an MAA for Employment and Skills. But it was short-lived, with Coventry soon opting out to concentrate on developing its links with Solihull and Warwickshire.

And there’s Birmingham’s devolution problem in a nutshell: no convincing city region. Instead of the pubescent MAA partners developing together, perhaps with the addition of adjoining authorities, into a single LEP corresponding to Clark’s ‘true economic geography’ of the city region, it split instead into three: Greater Birmingham & Solihull, which struggles to look convincing even on the map, the Black Country, and Coventry & Warwickshire.

west mids

The present situation is – how to put this – not exactly setting pulses racing. We have a recently, and for some unenthusiastically, agreed proposal for a Combined Authority of the seven former West Midlands metropolitan council boroughs – Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and, Wolverhampton – to run transportation, regeneration and economic development.

It clearly can’t claim, in Greg Clark’s words, to have any of its three LEPs “at the heart of arrangements” – although that could change with the possible addition of some or more councils in Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire – a state of uncertainty that Police & Crime Commissioner David Jamieson, the West Midlands only elected official, described this week as “an absolute dog’s breakfast”.

Finally, far from it having been agreed that the CA should have accountability through an elected mayor, it apparently won’t have any individual leadership at all. Apart from numerous commitments to “collaborative working”, the Launch Statement has nothing to say about governance, although the understanding is that each council leader will take responsibility for an individual policy portfolio.

Returning to the London Marathon analogy, Greater Manchester obviously crossed the Mall finish line some time ago, has donned its foil blanket, collected its Virgin Money finishers’ medal, and is heading back up the M6. Several others are on that home stretch between Big Ben and Buck House, but it seems the WMCA still has some miles to go to reach the Embankment.

Is a 120-member council really too big?

/ inlogov / 2 Comments

Chris Game

This blog’s main purpose is to place somewhere in the public domain some basic electoral data on council size. Basic, but not normally presented in a form that I’ve sometimes wanted for illustrative purposes. I’m hoping, therefore, there may be others who’ll find the data of at least passing interest, so here goes.

Cllrs table

Hmmm. I can sense you’re containing your excitement, so I’d better explain why I’m bothering you with this stuff when you’ve already got the Greek debt, bombing Syria, Osborne’s budget, child poverty and Wimbledon to worry about. It’s the very top line, showing how Birmingham’s 120 councillors represent by far the largest electorates of any single-tier English authority – and arguably three times that 6,131 number in practice, as all metropolitan boroughs currently comprise entirely three-member wards.

And that’s it? No, but it’s interesting, surely, to have statistical confirmation of the demands we make on councillors by the exceptional scale of our so-called local government. In Birmingham this means having to get yourself known by, and every four years seek the votes of, up to 20,000 voters, who wonder (or ask you aggressively) why they see their ‘local’ councillor only at election times.

It’s interesting too, I think, to have again confirmation of how the Local Government Boundary Commission for England (LGBCE) – whose figures these are concerns itself exclusively with ward/division variance within, as opposed to across, authorities. Just one ward or division exceeding 30% variance from an authority’s electors-per-councillor average qualifies that authority for electoral review. Yet, for instance, the 93% variance between the overall average for Birmingham (incidentally, the 9th most deprived English district) and that for neighbouring Solihull (179th) is brushed aside as, in the words of the Polish expression, “not our circus, not our monkeys”.

But even that’s not it – or not entirely. The timing of the blog is prompted by the possibility/probability that the Commission is preparing to act in a way that would increase that Birmingham-Solihull variance from 93% to around 130%. More specifically, it is understood to have rejected a cross-party submission by Birmingham’s political leaders to retain the 120-member city council at its present size, on the grounds that it “runs counter to recommendations in the Kerslake Review which suggested 100 councillors as a maximum number”.

At which point, I should first mention that ‘council size’ will mainly be used henceforth in the relatively rare but Boundary Commission sense of “the number of councillors elected to serve a council”. Secondly, and more importantly, I should explain this blog’s secondary purpose: to update you on one stream of the action that’s followed last year’s Pickles-initiated review into the governance of Birmingham City Council, led by Sir Bob Kerslake in the months before his retirement as DCLG Permanent Secretary.

Collectively, the Kerslake review’s findings and conclusions were dire. Birmingham was judged a dysfunctional council, with a damaging corporate culture, a micro-managing leadership, poor member-officer relations, an arrogant attitude towards partnerships, with multiple plans and strategies not followed through, and no clearly articulated vision for the city.

The Review produced 10 main recommendations, several with multiple parts. The first and probably most important was the imposition of an independent Improvement Panel to “provide support and challenge” to the Council and oversee the implementation of an improvement plan.

The fourth recommendation, and inevitably one of the most contentious, was that the LGBCE should conduct an Electoral Review to enable the Council to move to what Kerslake felt would be a more effective model for representative governance – namely, replacing (by 2017/18) the current system of election by thirds from three-member wards to all-out elections every four years from single-member wards.

For what it’s worth, it’s a recommendation with which I completely agree. But here’s the thing – size and numbers, views and recommendations. Most of the Kerslake review’s many references to the size of Birmingham City Council seem – though it’s always clear – to be to the Council as an organisation, to its staff, or even to its residential population.

There’s no doubt that the reviewers also weren’t keen on the size of the council in the Boundary Commission sense (p.10). They felt it made the council (apparently in the organisational sense) difficult to run and had encouraged “individual councillors to micro-manage services”. But their major concerns were the size of the three-member wards – which meant “some councillors are struggling to connect their communities with the council – and the pattern of election by thirds, which “has not helped the council’s ability to take strategic decisions.” These were the changes called for in the Electoral Review recommendation, which contained no mention of councillor numbers per se.

Council size was treated differently in the Kerslake review from election by thirds. It easily could have been a whole or part-recommendation, but it remained merely a “view” of the report’s authors that “there needs to be a significant reduction in the current number of councillors” (p.26). I don’t feel this is academic nit-picking. Words have meanings, and, were council members to argue that a view shouldn’t carry the same weight with the Commission as a recommendation, they would seem to have a point.

The 100-councillor figure, moreover, wasn’t even a view, or, for that matter, a maximum; more a conveniently round-numbered illustration (p.26): “For example, by creating 100 mainly single-member wards, the average population of a ward could be reduced to just 10,730 from 13,413. This would result in a direct saving of around £1.6 million over five years.” Note that casual “just 10,730”, which would be nearly half as many again as the highest average ward population of any other single-tier authority, EVEN IF that authority too (Leeds) were forced to switch to single-member wards.

As already emphasized, however, the LGBCE, regards such comparisons as irrelevancies. So, if Birmingham is going to be deemed not to merit a council of more than 100 members, what case will the Commission make to justify driving it even further out of line with other major metropolitan councils?

The Commission’s own 50-page Technical Guidance suggests it sees itself as independent of government, consultative where necessary, and open-minded, with no predetermined views of council size or councillor numbers. It believes each local authority should be considered individually, and dislikes comparisons of council populations and electorates, any mathematical criteria or formulae, and also arguments based either on population projections or future cost-savings. It is evidence-driven, provided the evidence is substantiated and relates specifically to the characteristics and needs of the review authority and its residents – the governance arrangements of the council, its scrutiny functions, and the representational role of its councillors in the local community.

All of which sounds fine. If 120 councillors with already statistically the heaviest workloads in the country with by far the highest population:councillor ratios in Europe can’t effectively justify their own continued existence, then perhaps they don’t deserve one. But then, if the Commission really did start with no predetermined views, why the rumours of it following the apparently cost-driven notions of the ministerially appointed Kerslake review not merely to the letter, but beyond? Odd.

As in so much of our local government practice, other countries have other ways of doing these things. Most democratic countries pay at least lip service to every vote being of equal weight, and therefore start off with a table rather like mine, listing numbers of either registered electors or all residents in each municipality, precisely so that comparisons CAN be made across councils of the same type.

Sweden is, well, Swedish, and details the whole council size procedure in Chapter 5 of its Local Government Act – and then translates the whole thing into English!. For a start – and a very good one, for any voting assembly – all total councillor numbers must be odd.

Second, an electorate-based formula sets MINIMUM numbers, which municipalities themselves may, and regularly do, increase: up to 12,000 electors – 31 councillors; 12,001 to 24,000 – 41; 24,001 to 36,000 – 51, and so on. Stockholm’s 660,000 electors, should any mathematicians be wondering, get just the 101 councillors, not 561.

Of course, not all countries are as Scandinavian in their determination of council sizes – though Purdam et al’s 2008 CCPR Working Paper is still one of the few academic examinations of these matters. But few, unaware of our now constitutional requirement that Manchester be advantageously treated in all things, would see the disparity between that city’s 96 councillors representing an average of 3,868 electors, Leeds’ 99 representing 5,426, and Birmingham’s current 120 representing 6,131 as some bizarre kind of democratic virtue. As for Kerslake’s suggested 10,730, they’d surely dismiss it as some sub-category of ‘ze Ingleesh sense of humeur’.

The table’s final column shows potential council sizes under a rough-and-ready Swedish-type formula, adjusted for the greater size of our metropolitan authorities: up to 200,000 electors – 60 councillors; 200,001 to 300,000 – 70; 300,001 to 400,000 – 80, and so on. Different bandings would obviously produce different results, but this one has Coventry, St Helens and Kirklees as the biggest gainers, Manchester, Bradford and Liverpool as the biggest losers, and Birmingham – well, there’s a coincidence – retaining its current 120 members.

In principle, one possible partial explanation of Manchester’s more generous councillor allocation could be that on current figures it’s the 4th most multiply deprived of England’s 326 district authorities – were it not that, as was noted above, and also in the Kerslake Supporting Analysis noted (p.13), Birmingham is only just behind it at 9th.

Kerslake doesn’t link deprivation to any consideration of council size, but the Scottish Boundary Commission does. In fact, it uses BOTH population size and level of deprivation as two of its three principal criteria for determining council numbers.

North of the border, therefore, Birmingham’s current population size, its dramatic projected growth – an additional 150,000 by 2031 – and its multiple deprivation would all militate against any cut in its councillor numbers. If the English Commission sees things markedly differently, it will be interesting to hear why.

Do ‘sticky’ institutions always survive? The demise of the Audit Commission

/ inlogov / Leave a comment

Katherine Tonkiss

The Audit Commission played a central role in the audit, inspection, performance improvement and regulation of local authorities (and other public service providers) in England for over thirty years. Operating at arm’s length from government, it thrived under the efficiency and performance improvement agendas of successive Conservative and Labour governments, growing into a large and powerful public body. Yet those familiar with the history of the Audit Commission may note that antipathy towards the institution among local authorities and other stakeholders grew at the same time its powers were being expanded, and when the Coalition Government came to power in 2010 the Commission had lost considerable popular support. Yet few – and least of all the Audit Commission itself – anticipated the announcement of its abolition in August 2010.

The academic literature on the reform of arm’s length bodies doesn’t account for the relative ease with which the decision to abolish the Audit Commission was accepted and progressed. This literature tends to highlight how abolitions of large and powerful bodies which are deeply embedded in the public institutional architecture of the state (as the Audit Commission was) are very contested and difficult to implement. The literature refers to the ‘institutional stickiness’ often displayed by such bodies, denoting their capacity to survive even where there is considerable will to abolish. The Audit Commission appears to buck this trend – why?

This is the question we sought to tackle in our recent article on the abolition of the Audit Commission, published in Local Government Studies. In our article we apply a form of ‘argumentative discourse analysis’ to a large qualitative dataset which we collated on the abolition. This approach enabled us to focus on the ways in which narratives and storylines expressed by different actors framed the Audit Commission and the decision to abolish. As a result, we are able to demonstrate how discourse is an important medium through which administrative reform is negotiated.

In our analysis we identified that there was a strong pro-abolition discourse which focused on the idea that the Audit Commission had become bureaucratic, inefficient and burdensome; that it was not delivering a regulatory function in the public interest; and that change was needed to rectify these problems to deliver full accountability for public audit. This discourse was underpinned by a range of storylines which focused on areas such as accountability, localism, inefficiency and the desirability of open market competition for audit contracts. These storylines were uttered by a wide range of considerably powerful actors such as the government, conservative MPs, the right-wing press and the Local Government Association, and in a range of public settings including parliamentary debates, evidence to select committees, press briefings and ministerial statements.

By contrast the anti-abolition discourse was far weaker. It focused on the Audit Commission as providing a high quality independent audit function and sought to challenge narratives about it being inefficient and wasteful. The key storylines were uttered by the left-leaning press, the Audit Commission itself, some third sector organisations, some Labour MPs and a trade union, making use of select committees, responses to the government consultation on the decision to abolish, and open letters. Yet this discourse was not overtly anti-reform. It focused more on preserving the key functions of the Audit Commission, such as the independence of public audit, more than it did on the preservation of the Commission itself.

What our analysis shows, therefore, is that a strong ‘discourse coalition’ formed around the pro-abolition position which provided a solid basis for the newly elected government – aided by a popular mandate, legislative capacity and executive authority – to move forward with abolition. The influential actors involved were able to access various institutional settings which ensured that these storylines would be reported in the media. Timing and time were also important factors – the proposal was developed in secret, and the Audit Commission was only notified a few hours ahead of the abolition statement in the House of Commons. Such timing prevented the Audit Commission from formulating and seeking to build a strong discourse coalition around its own anti-abolition storyline.

The Audit Commission’s ability to survive was also hindered by deep institutional norms which prevented it from seeking its own preservation. This can help to explain why it refrained from launching a full defence, focusing only on the preservation of its functions rather than of the organisation. The discursive resources open to the Audit Commission were constrained by the deep norms which come with accepting appointed office, including not criticising its own abolition or political decisions concerning administrative reform. Without this defence, and without substantial stakeholder opposition to the proposals, the abolition was relatively straightforward.

Our analysis, therefore, helps to explain why, contrary to the literature on institutional stickiness and to other parallel cases of public body abolition at the time, the Audit Commission’s abolition was relatively simple and unopposed. Isolated and bound by institutional norms not to criticise its own abolition, the Audit Commission and its few supporters were placed in a weak position by a powerful pro-abolition discourse coalition.

This post is based on the following article: Tonkiss, K. and Skelcher, C. (2015) Abolishing the Audit Commission: framing, discourse coalitions and administrative reform. Local Government Studies. DOI: 10.1080/03003930.2015.1050093.

Katherine Tonkiss is a Lecturer in Sociology and Policy at the School of Languages and Social Sciences, Aston University. Prior to this she was a Research Fellow at INLOGOV working on Shrinking the State, a project examining the abolition of public bodies under Coalition Government.

Katie Tonkiss

Recall – right for councillors, right for mayors

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Chris Game

The topical, and certainly most agreeable, purpose of this blog is to applaud the appointment of illustrator, cartoonist and writer, Chris Riddell, as the ninth Children’s Laureate. The enviably talented Riddell has been The Observer’s political cartoonist for 20 years and is also a writer and multi-award-winning illustrator of children’s books. But before any of that fame and fortune, he generously provided easily the most eye-catching half-page in an INLOGOV undergraduate degree recruitment brochure. His still spiky cartoon captures those history-changing few days in March 1991 when the Major Government dumped Mrs Thatcher’s community charge/poll tax, slashed existing bills by raising VAT from 15 to 17½%, announced what would become the replacement council tax, and saved the 1992 General Election.

Game pic

For younger, or possibly overseas, readers, the distraught pilot of the community charge flying machine with its flying pig emblem (and looking just a little like the late Michael Foot) is Michael (now Lord) Heseltine, then in his second stretch as Environment Secretary, and the VAT balloon man is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Norman (now Lord) Lamont.

The accompanying sketch has no connection whatever, except that it’s the only art work – as opposed to artwork – I ever actually commissioned for a recruitment brochure, by Rose (Rosetta) Checkley, a then member of our secretarial staff. It shows the Joseph Chamberlain Clock Tower (‘Old Joe’), the unrefurbished Muirhead Tower, where INLOGOV is today, and in the foreground the JG Smith Building, where we were then.

It would be really good now to segue into a blog on, say, the kinds of things Chris Riddell will be promoting or fighting, like school libraries and public library cuts. But I can’t, so instead it’s a Python-style Now-for-Something- Completely-Different moment.

Leaders of England’s 150 largest councils should be receiving about now a letter from Kevin Davis, Conservative leader of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames council, urging them to follow Kingston’s lead in introducing a system of councillor recall.

It’s hardly a new idea. We hear it almost whenever a councillor is revealed to have ‘forgotten’ to declare a significant pecuniary interest, confided their tasteless personal opinions to Twitter and the world, or simply failed persistently to attend council meetings.

It has slowly come to the boil in Kingston, though, after a Liberal Democrat councillor was dismissed from his party group over allegations of falsely claiming more than £3,600 in council tax benefit. He was eventually convicted, but in the long meantime he continued sitting as a councillor and claiming his £7,500 annual allowance.

Moreover, if re-elected, he could have continued doing so even after his conviction, since the offences carried a maximum tariff of less than a three-month prison sentence. Understandably, many constituents were angry that, under existing rules, there was nothing they could do. In future, though, there may be.

Kingston council will vote next month on innovative proposals to give voters the power to sack their local Councillor.  Several suggested scenarios could trigger a petition calling for a by-election. They include a Councillor’s attendance at meetings over a municipal year falling below 20%, conviction of a crime resulting in any prison sentence, and moving their main residence outside the Royal Borough.

If any of these criteria are met, the council’s monitoring officer would decide whether a petition should be launched on the council website calling for the Councillor’s resignation. Ward electors would have three months to sign the petition, and, if more than a third do so, the Councillor would be expected to resign, triggering a by-election.

The ‘expected to resign’ formula obviously reflects the voluntary nature of the procedure at this stage, even if adopted. But Councillor Davis hopes it will be taken up across local government – hence the letter to council leaders – and eventually embodied in legislation.

My guess, though, is that Ministers, however fondly they may currently feel towards the electorate, are likely to be pretty suspicious. For this ‘let’s trust the voters’ business is just the kind of contagious democratic populism they felt had to be stamped on in the last parliament in relation to MPs’ recall.

Some Members – like, as it happens, Kingston’s two MPs, Zac Goldsmith and James Berry – argued for a genuinely voter-initiated recall process. Instead, we had the Coalition’s half-hearted and unconvincing concession that voters will only get even a chance to remove their MP if s/he is actually jailed or fellow MPs give their permission first.

It was a promising opportunity cynically wasted, so it’s encouraging that the recall principle is being kept in the public eye by this Kingston initiative. However, if we’re looking at local government, while being able to instigate the recall of councillors is undoubtedly important, it’s surely even more vital to have a robust procedure in place to remove, if necessary, those with serious executive power.

At present, that means particularly the metro-mayors that the Cities & Local Government Devolution Bill sets as the accountability price for a combined city regional authority to be trusted with Chancellor George Osborne’s “full suite of devolved powers” over transport, policing, economic development, health and social care.

Obviously, elected executive mayors don’t constitute the only, or even necessarily the best, model of city or county regional leadership and accountability.  It reeks, particularly ironically for a devolution policy, of one-size-fits-all, and it’s almost nationally embarrassing that this and previous governments haven’t cared enough to compare and consider models deployed effectively in other European cities: leaders’ boards, elected and unelected assemblies, standing conferences of key stakeholders.

But sadly, that’s not how UK governments work, of any political colour. They use parliamentary majorities backed by a quarter of the registered electorate to enact dogma-driven rather than evidence-based policy, and this government’s devolution dogma is metro mayors, at least for city regions.

In a governmental system as centralised as Britain’s, therefore, if elected mayors are the government’s condition for ‘far-reaching devolution’, and it was in the party’s election manifesto – as metro-mayors were – you work with and try to make the best of it, which in this case should mean including in the legislation an electoral recall procedure.

That’s what Germany did in the early 1990s. After decades of different local government systems in each of the four Allied occupational zones, and following the country’s reunification, there was throughout the Länder what one commentator described as a “bushfire-like spread of the direct election of mayors”, driven by concerns about performance and democratic deficits.

Bushfires tend not to consult much before they spread, and neither did the Länder governments. They legislated and imposed.  BUT, as a quid pro quo, all the newly mayoral Länder also legislated procedures whereby a sitting mayor could be removed from office through a local referendum – a direct democratic instrument to hold the mayor politically accountable. It was obviously inspired by the recall mechanism used widely in the US, though, with all mayoral municipalities having elected councils, in some Länder the actual referendum is triggered by, say, a two-thirds majority vote of councillors, rather than by a citizen petition.

In the week when Tower Hamlets voters elected a mayor to replace one they themselves played no direct part in removing, it is worth emphasising the importance of both the existence and accessibility of these recall mechanisms in easing German citizens’ early acceptance of what for most was an alien institution.

They had their teething problems – in Brandenburg, for instance, whose voters were so taken by their new democratic power that mayoral recall became for a time a new popular sport: ‘Burgermeisterkegeln’ or playing bowling with the mayors. Generally, though, the prominence given to recall proved both good politics and good government – as surely it would be here.

Chris Game - pic

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.