We are looking for a keen and talented teaching fellow, to teach and support a mix of international students and UK public sector professionals, helping to develop the next generation of senior public sector managers and leaders.
The Department of Public Administration and Policy is a recently formed part of the University of Birmingham, incorporating the Institute of Local Government Studies (INLOGOV) – the leading UK centre for the study of public service management, policy and governance with over 50 years of experience working with local government and the public sector.
The department sits in the School of Government, which is one of the largest in the United Kingdom – home to more than 80 full-time academic staff, more than 1,200 undergraduate and taught postgraduate students, and more than 70 doctoral researchers. The School is intellectually vibrant with an excellent record in both research and teaching.
DPAP offers a range of postgraduate degree programmes, at Masters and Diploma levels, with a thriving doctoral research community. Our taught postgraduate programmes include a full-time on-campus Public Management MSc, an on-line Masters of Public Administration, and a blended Degree Apprenticeship in Public Leadership and Management.
DPAP’s teaching is informed by a robust and innovative research agenda. Building on our rich history of research addressing the institutional and political life of local government and public management, our teaching and research now also reaches beyond these traditional structures and actors to address governance, democracy, leadership, participation, policy-making, performance and financial management, and service delivery at and across multiple scales and issues.
The successful candidate will have a higher degree in a relevant area (or equivalent qualifications), high level analytical capability, and the ability to design and deliver module teaching materials successfully. Starting salary is £35-44.3k, and the post is initially for one year. Application deadline is 30th September.
It’s been an exciting month in government, nationally and locally, since the General Election on 4th July. As the new Labour administration finds its feet, somewhere on Ministers’ “to do” list will be local government performance and (the department formerly known as) DLUHC’s attempts to improve this through the establishment of OFLOG, the Office for Local Government.
The election marked the exact anniversary of Michael Gove’s statement setting up OFLOG through the policy document, Understanding and supporting local government performance. Its remit was “to provide authoritative and accessible data and analysis about the performance of local government and support its improvement”.
Gove was at pains to stress “this is not about recreating the Audit Commission”. With that point at least, I agree. Whereas the Audit Commission was fiercely independent, often willing to criticise government policy where it was a factor in poor performance, OFLOG was established as an office of the department within the DLUHC department itself. Whereas the Audit Commission developed comprehensive performance measures which were rigorously audited to assure consistency, OFLOG picked 27 PIs and published these. Whereas the Audit Commission provided detailed national studies to inform best practice in local services, sometimes leading to wholesale systems change such as around youth justice services, with the local implementation of recommendations then supported by local specialist value for money auditors, the nascent OFLOG offered to “continue a programme of webinars to share best practice”.
An early product of OFLOG, in July 2023, was its “Local Authority Data Explorer”, which now brings together PIs on waste management, planning, adult social care, roads, and corporate and financial issues. For each service, users can select three comparison councils to produce scatter charts like Figure 1, which compares my local council’s waste management with that of three other big cities. This led to some rather uninformed press commentary and a response from the LGA. One may also say this is perhaps not the most compelling presentation of data in the world, arguably significantly less clear or flexible than the LGA’s excellent Inform tool which has been freely available for several years and includes thousands of published metrics.
Caution should be applied to OFLOG’s position within a ministerial setting and the potential for politicians to be selective in how they use data for judging local authorities that are not of their political persuasion. Whilst some may argue that the former Audit Commission may have been too powerful, it did provide a greater degree of transparency and objectivity at interpreting performance data.
Figure 1: Waste management
As my colleague in Inlogov, Dr Philip Whiteman, has recently argued, the new government should ensure that OFLOG is independent of government with a remit to focus on:
Working with the sector to identify councils at risk of failure to ensure that support can be provided from within the sector, minimising the need for government intervention.
Collecting, analysing, and reporting data to enable individual councils, groups of councils and the sector nationally to make progress with shared priorities agreed with government.
Developing intelligence from on-going engagement with councils.
Supporting improvement in local services and councils’ contribution to national outcomes through researching, synthesising, and disseminating good practice.
Working with academic institutions such as Inlogov to incorporate key lessons from existing and future research.
We can be confident that local government performance overall is strong, and sector-led improvement has demonstrated our collective commitment to continuous improvement. But with so much of the new government’s ambitious “Missions” depending on highly effective local government, we need to take a fresh look at how OFLOG can be further developed to identify and propagate good practice across the sector.
Jason is Director of the Institute of Local Government Studies (INLOGOV) at the University of Birmingham and was employed by the Audit Commission from 1994 to 2004. This article was first published in the August 2024 LARIA Newsletter. Email [email protected]
INLOGOV’s new report, Equipping Local Government to Deliver National and Local Priorities, is available here.
On Wednesday 12th and Thursday 13th June 2024, I will be speaking on a panel with Dr. Rhiannon Jones of the University of Derby and Martin Ferguson of Socitm who invited us as part of their annual President’s Conference on the approaches that can be provided by universities for the benefit of the people and communities that they serve. As time is short on the day, I thought that I would put a few points in writing.
Hub for Collaborations
A University can provide a hub for collaboration between organisations in multiple sectors. Universities inhabit an in-between space – they are part of the country where they are situated and also very international both in terms of the composition of students and staff, and in the reach of their networks and research collaborations. Universities also exist in the cloud, with many courses being entirely online or hybrid, and many library resources now being electronic. Universities are measured on impact and therefore they also lie in that in-between space between academic knowledge and real-world practice within increasing emphasis to show how research and teaching is impacting communities outside of the institutions. Universities are also large employers and magnets for resource in their geographical location. Many suppliers have contracts with universities and many local businesses rely on student expenditure during university term times. This gives a university the influence and gravitas to be able to bring people together in a way that very few institutions can do, and I would advocate that it is something that we need to do much more of in a more organised manner. It does happen but it tends to be driven by individual academics or certain research projects rather than as part of a wider strategic plan either by a college or school.
Spaces to Reflect
Public service workplaces are busy places and over these last 15 years everyone has had to adopt the mantra of achieving more with less resource! This means that public service workers have been doing more than one person’s job which consequently means less time for them to reflect, learn, and develop themselves. Conversations with colleagues provide valuable support within stressful and complicated situations, however, they can often be action and task focused – we are talking shop when we talk to each other in a workplace. And this is where the learning development partnership with universities can be so helpful. I would say that a university course can provide a public service practitioner space to think about bigger philosophical themes that do not get focus in the workplace although implicitly public service practitioners know what these are. At the Institute of Local Government Studies, we deliver three master’s programmes, two of which are part-time programmes and one which is full-time programme. All of these programmes take a student through a learning journey to reflect upon six key questions:
Unless we are thinking about these things we just carry on moving on the treadmill without pausing and considering whether there are alternative approaches to the way things are currently.
Connecting Academic Knowledge with Practice Knowledge
When I am training practitioners or attending knowledge-exchange events, I always keep in-mind that I have to convince people that academic knowledge can be of relevance to their work. Both types of knowledge (academic and practice) can inform each other as much research is really the observation of practice and then taking those observations and formulating theories that can help us to better understand exactly what’s going on. For example, one of my roles in the School of Government is to represent us in a partnership with a civil service college in Ghana. I conducted a training there in March on the topic of understanding organisational cultures which was quite a novel topic for them. One of the models that I used from the academic literature in a workshop format was this one by Johnson et al. (2008).
Participants were mayors, assembly members, city managers, and other public managers, and they were asked to use the model to reflect upon their own work situation for approximately 15 minutes. They then split into smaller groups and shared experiences with each other and this seemed to provide them with a rich understanding of the dynamics that they were experiencing day-to-day but they would not necessarily have analysed what was going on without this exercise, and the academic framework provided a structure in which they could contain their thoughts. The feedback that I received was very positive for example,
‘After the CPD training, I have been able to gradually change the attitude of some staff towards work in terms of lateness, absenteeism, efficient use of material resources, client focus, participation, etc.’
‘By understanding the organization’s mission, vision and goals, as well as foster collaboration, innovation, learning and team effort in achieving the organizational overall objectives. Organizational culture also helps me build shared values and unified efforts among my colleagues, hence it helps to contribute to achieving the organization goals and objectives.’
So, you can see that universities can provide practice with spectacles with which to see what is going on so the practitioners gain better clarity on how to create change.
Shailen Popat works as an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Local Government Studies at the University of Birmingham where he is Director of the MSc in Public Management. In 2022, he was awarded the accolade of University Outstanding Teacher, and in 2023, he was awarded a Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.
This blog was prompted partly by Vivien Lowndes’ and Phil Swann’s recent INLOGOV blog giving “Two cheers for combined authorities and their mayors”. Substantively, anyway, although the decisive stimulus was the realisation that most, if not all, of those present at the relevant ‘Brown Bag’ session would probably have been unaware that seated among them was the co-author of almost certainly the most comprehensive examination of this topic by any INLOGOV colleague over the years.
I refer to the appropriately labelled ‘long-read’, also masquerading as an INLOGOV blog and entitled Briefing Paper: Elected Mayors, published shortly before the 2017 elections of what I think of as the second generation of elected mayors – and produced by Prof Catherine Staite and a Jason Lowther.
Catherine, nowadays an Emeritus Professor of Public Management, had recently stepped down as Director of INLOGOV, in which capacity she had, among numerous other initiatives, both launched and regularly contributed to our/her blog. And, while I certainly recalled reading the Briefing Paper, I confess that, with his name meaning little to me at the time, I’d forgotten her co-author. Apologies, Jason.
He claimed, moreover, that he himself had “forgotten” it (email, 14/5), which I didn’t, of course, believe … until, a few days later and following some ‘research’, I discovered one of my own INLOGOV blogs, on the Magna Carta and 800 years of Elected Mayors, which I really had totally forgotten. Whereupon I realised too that I couldn’t actually recall much of what Catherine, I and other colleagues contributed to that decade of debate on elected mayoral evolution.
So, the remainder, the structure, and – I fear – the length of this blog were prompted, yes, by much of the media coverage of this month’s elections, and the sense that the spread and substance of mayoral government over the past decade aren’t fully recognised even by those who supposedly follow these things; and also by the notion that it would be a pleasing mini-tribute to Catherine to do so by identifying and italicising particularly some of her and colleagues’ INLOGOV blog contributions on these mayoral matters over the years.
We start, however, for the benefit of comparatively late arrivals, at the beginning of not the blog, but the concept. Mayoral government is a postulation you might expect to have found a supportive, even enthusiastic, reception in an Institute of Local Government Studies and it mainly did, albeit with perhaps a certain reservation. Directly elected mayors (DEMs) had played a fluctuating role in the Blair Government’s local government agenda from the outset. London, noted in Labour’s 1997 manifesto as “the only Western capital without an elected city government”, would have a “new deal”. Which took the form in 2000 of the creation of the Mayor-led Greater London Authority – in the manifesto, so no referendum required. Probably no reminder required either, but they’ve been: Ken Livingstone (Ind/Lab; 2000-08), Boris Johnson (Con; 2008-16); Sadiq Khan (Lab; 2016- ).
The Local Government Act 2000 then provided all English and Welsh councils with optional alternatives to the traditional committee system. Chiefly, following a petition of more than 5% of their electorate, they could hold a referendum on whether to introduce a directly elected mayor plus cabinet. There were 30 of these referendums in 2001/02, producing 11 DEMs – plus Stoke-on-Trent’s short-lived mayor-plus-committee system – three in London boroughs, but most famously Hartlepool United’s football mascot, H’Angus the Monkey, aka Stuart Drummond (Indep).
Ten referendums over the ensuing decade produced a further three mayors, prompting the now Cameron-led Conservatives to pledge in their 2010 manifesto to introduce elected ‘Boris-style’ mayors for England’s 12 (eventually 11) largest cities, with significant responsibilities including control of rail and bus services, and money to invest in high-speed broadband.
Birmingham voted 58% against, despite Labour’s having in Liam Byrne a candidate raring to go, and Coventry 64% against. There was speculation over whether the addition of a well publicised mayoral recall provision(CG) might have swung some of the lost referendums. But it was what it looked: an overdue, and to some welcome(Andrew Coulson), end of an episode(Karin Bottom);arguably “the wrong solution to the wrong problem”(Catherine Durose).
Since then, the referendums successfully removing elected mayors (Stoke-on-Trent, Hartlepool, Torbay, Bristol) have exceeded those creating new ones (Copeland, Croydon) – though, in fairness, those four removals were more than matched by five retention votes.
A ‘mayoral map’ at the end of that first decade would have looked something like the inset in my illustration of in fact the first 20 years of referendum results – numerous splotches of red for Reject, a few smaller green specks for Accept, and overall a patchy, somewhat arbitrary, experiment that on a national scale never really took off.
The mayoral concept, though, had also generated interest outside local government – the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), for instance, advocating Mayors for Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, and Liverpool City Region to take the required ‘big’ decisions on housing, transport, and regional development. Prime Minister David Cameron too was a ‘city mayors’ fan, although what scale of ‘city’ wasn’t initially clear, until in 2014 what became known as the first ‘devolution deal’ (Catherine Needham) was announced with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. Headed by an elected ‘metro-mayor’ (CG), comparable to the Mayor of London, the GMCA would have greater control over local transport, housing, skills and healthcare, with “the levers you need to grow your local economy”.
New legislation – the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016 – was required, allowing the introduction of directly elected Mayoral Combined Authority or ‘Metro Mayors’(Vivien Lowndes & Phil Swann) (+ Catherine Staite) in England and Wales, with devolved housing, transport, planning and policing powers.
The Combined Authority elections were held in May 2017 – not coinciding with the General Election(CG) as PM Theresa May had contemplated but, in contrast to Rishi Sunak, chickened out of – with perhaps usefully split results(CG). Elected were Andy Burnham (Lab, Greater Manchester), Steve Rotheram (Lab, Liverpool City Region), Ben Houchen (Cons, Tees Valley), Andy Street (Cons, West Midlands), Tim Bowles (Cons, West of England), and James Palmer (Cons, Cambridgeshire & Peterborough) – followed in 2018 by Dan Jarvis (Lab, Sheffield City Region). The map had started to change – even within the first hundred days (CG) – stutteringly under the less committed Theresa May and/or in several cases where groups of local authorities failed to agree – but eventually dramatically, as evidenced in the larger illustrated map. The Staite/Lowther ‘Briefing Paper’ was well timed.
A few years on, mayoral devolution has trailblazed across the country (CG) to a greater extent than even some commentators on this year’s local elections seemed to have difficulty grasping. As of March 2024, devolution deals had been agreed with 22 areas, covering 60% of the English population – most recently, in late 2022, North of Tyne, Norfolk/Suffolk, East Midlands, York & North Yorkshire; in 2023 Cornwall, Greater Manchester and West Midlands (‘Trailblazers’), Greater Lincolnshire, Lancashire, Hull/East Yorkshire; and so far in 2024 Buckinghamshire, Warwickshire and Surrey.
From next year, if you draw a straightish line from, say, Ipswich in South Suffolk up through about Alvechurch in South Birmingham, heading for Shrewsbury, at least five-sixths of the bits of England to your north will be under mayoral devolution. Which, to me anyway, seems pretty dramatic news, and considerably more interesting than the endless General Election Date speculation that passed this May for ‘Local Elections’ reporting.
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.
There are reasons to be cheerful about the fact that the newest component of English local government, the mayoral combined authorities, were in the headlines this spring. There were also reasons for caution, however, most notably the particular focus on two of the mayoral elections, in Teesside and the West Midlands, as a guide to the popularity (or not) nationally of Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party.
This fact that combined authorities were in the news is a prompt to take stock of their development and impact with some thoughts stimulated by the discussion at a recent INLOGOV Brown Bag[1]session.
The media attention was attributable to the mayoral elections, with many of the incumbent candidates having established a national profile by, for example, challenging the government’s approach to Covid (Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester), defying political gravity and weak governance (Ben Houchen in Teesside) or crafting a new brand of active, compassionate Conservatism and challenging the government’s pruning of HS2 (Andy Street in the West Midlands).
The mayors have also disrupted the escalator assumption of British politics in which ambitious politicians use local government as a stepping stone to parliament and government. Burnham, Liverpool City Region’s Steve Rotherham and the new mayor of the East Midlands Claire Ward have each moved in the opposite direction.
The metro mayors undoubtedly have higher profiles than most council leaders. They have demonstrated impact beyond their statutory remit through soft power, particularly their ability to convene discussions and galvanise action on issues such as public health and homelessness.
Doubts remain about the sense of vesting so much power in a single individual. Only three of the twelve metro-mayors are women, showing the danger of equating ‘strong leader’ with ‘strong man’. More effort is needed on the part of political parties to diversify their mayoral candidate selection.
It is also valid to question whether, for example, an elected mayor in the West Midlands would have added more value as part of the city council’s governance rather than that of the wider city region. Some would argue that the city would benefit from the type of focussed political leadership that Mayor Jules Pipe provided in Hackney. Experience in both Liverpool and Bristol suggests that having a mayor at both city and city region level causes confusion.
There has been very little discussion about the role of council leaders as key players in the governance of combined authorities through their membership of the mayors’ cabinets. As one council leader in Greater Manchester is quoted[2] as saying: “We have to work with a mayor we did not want while he has to work with a cabinet he did not chose”.
The Greater London Authority model is very different, with a separately elected London assembly as well as a mayor. While this may seem more democratic, public awareness of the assembly is far lower than that of the mayor[3]. Perhaps it is time for a comparative review of these two very different sets of governance arrangements. In both cases, there is a strong argument for greater public involvement outside of the electoral cycle, both in setting up new combined authorities and to inform ongoing priorities.
The role of council leaders is inevitably linked with the wider question of the relationship between the combined authorities and their constituent councils. To date this has proved to be remarkably smooth, particularly given the often toxic precedent of county-district relations. The next period may be more testing. To date, councils and metro mayors have been united in coping with austerity, but difficult decisions about priorities will have to be taken should a new government make limited additional resources available. The increased interest of combined authorities and mayors in strategic spatial planning and housing will also raise challenging and potentially divisive issues.
The jury is out on the extent to which the establishment of combined authorities has led to substantive devolution of power from central government, although progress has been made in areas such as adult education, transport, health (in Greater Manchester) and mental health (in the West Midlands). While the new ‘trailblazer deals’ in Greater Manchester and the West Midlands promise a single funding settlement with central government, other combined authorities find themselves still bogged down in competitive bidding for relatively small pots of money.
One important feature of combined authorities is the way they are creating opportunities for innovation and testing new ways of working at a local level. To fully exploit the potential of this development it is important that arrangements are put in place to capture this learning and share it between combined authorities, and especially with newcomers like East Midlands, North East and York and North Yorkshire. There is also potential for metro-mayors to speak with a stronger collective voice in challenging and informing central government on issues affecting local and regional governance.
Finally, it is important to remember that combined authorities did not begin with a blank sheet of paper. The GLA and many of the combined authorities have similar boundaries as the GLC and metropolitan counties which were abolished by Margaret Thatcher in a fit of political pique in the 1980s.
Harold Macmillan pioneered regional arrangements for devolved delivery with regional boards to promote industrial productivity during the second world war and regional housing production boards to help meet his 300,000 a year housing target in the 1950s. Neither were well-received in Whitehall. John Prescott followed with his regional development agencies, abolished by Cameron’s coalition government, and his failed bid to create regional assemblies. What marks out combined authorities is the lack of a ‘one size fits all’ approach, with size, functions and governance arrangements varying around the country.[4] Indeed, only 50% of England’s population live in combined authority areas (so far).
Given this rocky terrain, it may be rash to vest too much hope in combined authorities and their mayors. But they clearly have the potential to disrupt our centralised politics and join-up aspects of regional governance after decades of damaging fragmentation.
Vivien Lowndes is Professor Emerita in the School of Government, University of Birmingham.
Phil Swann is studying for a PhD at INLOGOV in the Department of Public Administration and Policy, University of Birmingham, on the contribution of politicians to central-local government relations.
[1] INLOGOV’s Brown Bag sessions are informal monthly discussions on events in and around local government bringing together academics, researchers, students, practitioners and alumni. For further details please Phil Swann ([email protected])
[2] Blakeley, G and Evans, B. 2023 How metro mayors are getting things done – even if they have limited money and power. The Conversation June 28 2023.
[3] According to London Elects (londonelects.org.uk) in January 2020 58% of people were aware that a mayoral election was taking place compared with 32% for the assembly election (down from 40% in 2016).
[4] Durose, C. and Lowndes, V. 2021. Why are designs for urban governance so often incomplete? A conceptual framework for explaining and harnessing institutional incompleteness, Environment & Planning C: Politics & Space, https://doi.org/10.1177/2399654421990;
The meetings of the North West London Joint Health Scrutiny Committee, which I Chair, don’t usually set the pulses racing but the recent one was an exception.
My committee’s job is to keep a friendly but critical eye on how the NHS North West London Integrated Care Board (ICB) delivers its budget of over £4 billion to the 2.4 million population of the eight NW London boroughs.
What made my committee’s recent meeting special was that information had leaked revealing ICB plans for major changes in GP ‘same day’ services, replacing the system of individual practice reception staff passing calls on to GPs with a new system in which far fewer “hubs” would pass 93 percent of calls to other staff, with only 7 percent to be handled by GPs. The ICB had planned to introduce the hubs by April 1 as part of its ‘single offer’ local enhanced service, with practices obliged to sign up to access the funding — effectively mandating the hubs. They were forced to delay by a storm of protest from GPs and our residents.
While my committee meetings are held in public, the members of the public aren’t usually allowed to speak at meetings, but on this occasion, I thought it right to ask Merril Hammer, a Hammersmith resident, Robin Sharp, a Brent resident, and Dr Vishal Vala, a local GP, to set the scene.
Merril spoke eloquently about the risks of triage or assessment in hubs by care co-ordinators or others who were not qualified or experienced GPs. The lack of any analysis of the impact on different groups and of proper risk assessment and of any reports from pilots was also of great concern.
Robin stated that Brent Patient Voice had urged patient involvement in any trials when the pilots were first mentioned, but the ICB had failed to listen. What had emerged to be implemented without any consultation with GPs had caused a great surprise and undermined the role of GPs as established since the NHS began.
When members of my committee gave voice to their questions and concerns, there was heavy criticism of the way in which the scheme had been developed by management consultants behind closed doors and without any prior engagement with the local government. There was concern that only long-term patients with complex needs would be referred to their GPs, when practices were made up of patients of all ages with needs that varied from time to time.
The ICB has now apologised for ‘poor communications’, arguing there had been ‘misunderstandings’ about triaging. They now talk of “co-production” with residents and local government at local level. So we look forward seeing the ICB’s plan for this and for wider engagement with the public as a revised scheme is developed.
Cllr Ketan Sheth chairs the North West London Join Health Scrutiny Committee
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