Directly elected mayors in England: leading local government?

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John Fenwick and Howard Elcock

The first directly-elected executive mayors in England took office more than a decade ago. Drawing inspiration from European and American experience, the directly elected mayor appealed to New Labour and Conservative policy-makers alike, offering an apparent solution to perceived problems of weak local leadership and bureaucratic stagnation. The heroic image of urban leaders from the world’s great cities was implicit in this depiction of the elected mayor, a new figure in English (and potentially Welsh) local government who would have decisive executive authority gained from direct popular mandate.

It didn’t work out like this. Under legislation enacted in 2000, the first local referendums largely rejected the mayoral option. In 2012 the coalition government initiated 10 further mayoral referendums in selected English cities but in only one – Bristol – was there popular assent for establishing the office of mayor. Overall, there is no evidence of widespread public support, yet the prospect of more mayors – with enhanced powers – remains firmly on the policy agenda. Why?

Drawing from a decade of research by the authors, this article considers reasons for the persistence of the mayoral experiment, its broad support across political parties and the importance of specific local factors in the few areas where mayors actually exist. It finds little evidence of public enthusiasm. It suggests that the relationship of mayoral leadership to place remains problematic. Analytically the article uses the authors’ leadership grid to link the governmental, governance and allegiance roles of mayors to the problematic nature of local leadership. The article also finds that although further legislation in 2007 – under which it became possible to establish a mayoral system through simple council resolution rather than referendum – potentially facilitated expansion of the mayoral system, this rapid expansion has not occurred. Indeed, two areas which previously adopted the office of mayor subsequently reversed their decision. Thus, in 2014, there are (excluding the London mayor, a different job with different powers) only 15 directly elected mayors in England. This is interesting and curious: not only in political terms but also in terms of local leadership and the long-standing search for an effective core executive. What is going on?

A full version of this article – Elected Mayors: Leading Locally? – is published in Local Government Studies. The article is open access until the end of February 2014.

John-Fenwick

John Fenwick is Professor of Leadership and Public Management at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University. He is author of Managing Local Government (1995), numerous articles on local governance and public policy, and co-editor of Public Management in the Postmodern Era (2010). His current research includes local leadership and the elected mayor; the third sector in local service provision; and critical approaches to management development and organisational behaviour.

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Howard Elcock is Professor (emeritus) at Northumbria University. He is author of Administrative Justice (1969), Portrait of a Decision: the Council of Four and the Treaty of Versailles (1972), Local Government (three editions 1984–1994) and Political Leadership (2001). His current research includes political leadership and elected mayors; local democracy; and the ethics of government.

It wouldn’t be honest! Will closing the high road lead to congestion on the low road?

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Alan Doig

Only a few weeks after my recent article on addressing fraud, corruption and conflict-of-interest in local government from the enforcement and public ethics perspectives – the low road and high road approaches – the EU produced an overview report on corruption. Drawing on a series of member state country studies, the report unsurprisingly argued that corruption continued to be an issue because although most member states had the necessary laws and institutions in place, they were not entirely effective.

This was apparently because ‘anti-corruption rules are not always vigorously enforced, systemic problems are not tackled effectively enough, and the relevant institutions do not always have sufficient capacity to enforce the rules. Declared intentions are still too distant from concrete results, and genuine political will to eradicate corruption often appears to be missing’.

While the UK report did not cover local government, such conclusions would raise pertinent comments about the abolition of the Standards Board and the Audit Commission in terms of the high road approach. Given the UK study also claimed that, ‘traditionally, the UK promotes high ethical standards in public service’ then it would be worth asking what does the abolition of the two institutions tell us about this ‘tradition’ in terms of capacity, results and will.

While is it often relatively easy to identify why public officials become involved in dishonesty – and my next blog will talk about ‘vigorous enforcement’ – what is of interest to those seeking to develop preventative strategies to guard against the misuse of public office is how to develop and maintain a culture of public service that promotes honesty. The objective of any prevention strategy would therefore seek to reflect a theme raised by the US National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice over a quarter of a century ago in relation to corruption: ‘corruption has three main components that are controllable and one that is not. The three controllable ones are opportunity, incentive, and risk; the uncontrollable one is personal honesty. Many public servants over a long period of time have had the freely available opportunity to be corrupt, a large incentive to do so, and little risk of being found if they did, but have refused because ‘it wouldn’t be honest’ (Zimmerman, 1980).

It was the 1995 report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life that raised the question of the ‘grey area’ of uncertainty of ‘the difference between what is right and what is wrong’ and sought responses that encouraged guidance and education in ethical conduct. Since then the Committee itself has hardly taken the lead in responding to issues of capacity and will following the abolition of the organisations. This has appeared to take place at the same time as its interest in local government waned since it suspended its inquiry into leadership and trust in local government in 2009 in order to rush after the unfolding scandal of MPs’ expenses. This inquiry has not been picked up subsequently. Despite the Committee’s 2012 concerns about ‘the inherent robustness of the new arrangements’ and its Chair’s late 2013 reiteration of 2010 comments on the new regime being ‘stripped back too far’, an inquiry into the regime and arrangements – pencilled into the Committee’s 2012-2015 strategy – yet did not appear as an agenda item on the Committee’s 2014 workplan.

Who will pick up lead responsibility for public ethics at local level is now in limbo as the government also shifts its attention to what it sees as a more immediate and, in savings terms, more tangible results-based focus on preventing and detecting losses from fraud and corruption through the low road route. Even here the prevention aspect is losing ground to investigation and enforcement; the most visible sign of this came with the abolition of the National Fraud Authority, despite its apparent role in ‘successfully’ raising awareness of fraud and improving coordination, in favour of ‘cutting economic crime’ through law enforcement.

Nevertheless this comes after the Committee on Standards in Public Life that in 2013 changed its view about ‘grey areas’ explanations of unacceptable conduct in arguing that those in public life ‘behaved inappropriately not because they were unaware of what was expected but because they did not find it expedient’. In other words, both roads need to be tackled. Failing to discourage dishonesty and promoting honesty by closing the high road is likely to see an increase of both types of misconduct on the low road, leading to a potential congestion for those charged with investigation and enforcement. The next question is thus two-fold; how is the congestion likely to be addressed and how is the high road to be re-opened?

Zimmerman, J. F. (1980), ‘Ethics in the Public Service’, Paper Presented at the Maxwell Graduate School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, July 9, 1980.

Partnerships and service integration – is it all just hot air?

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Axel Kaehne

Since the 1990s, policy makers and academics have had a pet project in public service reform. Over time, they have called it differently but always meant essentially the same: public services collaborating with each other to improve service quality. At some point, it was called partnerships (remember the Partnership Agenda under Tony Blair’s government?), then it was service integration, a term particularly popular amongst health care professionals.

But what drives this collaborative agenda and where should it lead? Have we achieved anything over the last decades or was this all just hot air?

Academics have pointed out for a long time that there is a glaring gap in the partnership and integration project – evidence. We know from studies that working together does make a difference to professionals. This would be good if the main objective was to overcome service fragmentation per se, yet what drives much of the public policy announcements are intentions to improve service quality for users and patients.

Conceptualising service collaboration has been a well tilled field. Personalisation of services, where public services are shaped around the needs of the user is one way of thinking about improving public service delivery. Direct payments are a powerful instrument to re-orientate public services by putting the user in control. Yet, direct payments have been met with fierce resistance from some corners of the professional establishment, whilst the Welsh Government actively discouraged local authorities to use them until recently. Consequently, the take up of direct payments has been low.

In addition, producing evidence of the effects of service collaboration has proved to be the proverbial ‘holy grail’. The main stumbling block to it has been to establish a robust link between organisational changes and service improvements. As services improve their collaborative practices, the interface between users and professionals may often be largely unaffected. Organisational changes may not be noticeable for users. My paper on multi-agency protocols shows that even where the evidential link between changes and outcome is well defined, effects may be marginal and introspective at best.

Another reason is that service improvements are most urgent when users or patients draw on support from many different professionals because of the complexity of their needs. In the field of children’s services it is not uncommon to have families dealing with fifteen different professionals or more at a time.

The complexity of service delivery impacts on how organisational changes are perceived by the users and how they are affected by them. Key working may be a useful example. Potentially, key workers were supposed to reduce the number of professionals working with a service user, yet there is little evidence that they have had this desirable effect. More often than not, key workers joined the long list of professionals without reducing the need to be in contact with others. In other words, they turned into another layer of service delivery on top of the already existing ones.

So, why is it so difficult to improve service delivery in collaborative contexts? The answer lies in the discrepancy between policy objectives and the levers for change we have available. Policy makers constantly profess a desire to improve services by urging professionals to work together. Yet, there is only one player in this game who really knows what would constitute better services: the user. As long as professionals are in the driving seat, users will be a polite afterthought to their practice. Whether you call it partnership or service integration, collaborative practice grows from user demand. Better public services for users with complex needs should not be a product of professional generosity but an outcome of user demand. Until the user is in control of the service they get, service collaboration will remain little more than hot air.

Axel’s article, ‘Multi-Agency Protocols as a Mechanism to Improve Partnerships in Public Services’, is published in Local Government Studies.

axel

Dr. Axel Kaehne is currently Chair of GORWEL, the Welsh Foundation for Innovation in Public Affairs and a Senior Research Fellow at the Faculty for Health and Social Care, Edge Hill University. He is also Senior Research Fellow at the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital NHS Trust in Liverpool.

The Big Society lasted 1000 days. Will we ever see ideas of its like again?

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Stephen Jeffares

The FT’s Chris Giles recently wrote:

“Mark Carney Bank of England governor, has signalled that his policy of linking interest rates to the unemployment rate [Forward Guidance] will be buried less than six months after its birth…his big idea for monetary policy has bitten the dust” (FT, 24 January 2014).

This is not the first time in the last year we have heard reports of “big ideas” “biting the dust”.  The same has been levelled at Cameron’s purported big idea in politics: The Big Society.  How funny that sounds just a few months after thousands of policy actors were deliberately inserting Big Society terminology into their strategies, job descriptions and articles. A friend who recently attended a meeting at CLG told me that the last remnants of the Big Society team have now left their posts; organisationally, at least, the Big Society is dead.

As the title suggests,  and in a new book, I argue that Big Society lasted around a 1,000 days.  That is rather neat, I admit.  Wayne Parsons has argued that you need a sensitive measuring device to understand the death and termination of public policies, but as a starting point you can think about newspaper citations.  Although a crude measure, this reveals the date when a policy idea first entered the public realm, the peak of discussion, and the point after which it is never uttered again.

It reminds me of Frazer’s description of how Saharan Tuareg tribes would up camp when somebody died, and never mention the deceased’s name ever again. Although government actors do not quite up camp, they shuffle around, renaming units and amending job titles, renewing websites and pulping documents.  As for the newspapers, for a while they write of the policy’s death, of u-turns, and discuss hints of decline (as in the article above); more important is to focus on the point where they stop mentioning it – that is when the idea is dead.  It is also a point in time seldom acknowledged.

So where does my 1,000 days come from?  Well, counting citations in British Broadsheet newspapers (see Figure 2.1) you can see that in 2008 there were no mentions of the Big Society, a few hundred in 2009, great excitement by 2011, and just over one mention a day in 2013.

jeffares

My prediction is that at some point in 2014 we will not speak of Big Society again – it will be the end.

But will we see anything on the scale of Big Society ever again? If Forward Guidance is anything to go by, it is quicker and easier than ever to discuss, endorse, but also critique and deride policy ideas. But it is also quicker and easier to coin and foster them too.

Some critics of the Big Society pointed to how many times it was relaunched, but like iPhones or Apps, we are in an age where we can release beta versions, test things out, get feedback and quickly offer updated bug fixes or new versions. We cannot measure the longevity of a policy idea by expectation alone – no, we can speculate about decline but it is not until the tribe up-sticks and moves to a new part of the desert, vowing never to mention its name again, that we can be sure that it is truly dead.

An earlier version of this blog appeared here 27 January 2014.

jeffares-stephen

Stephen Jeffares is a Lecturer based in INLOGOV. His fellowship focuses on the role of ideas in the policy process and implications for methods.  He is a specialist in Q methodology and other innovative methods to inform policy analysis. Stephen’s book, Interpreting Hashtag Politics: policy ideas in an era of social media, will be published by Palgrave in April 2014.  Preorder or follow @srjeffares

Who is in control of the sandbags?

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Philip Whiteman and Ian Briggs

The recent news that the Minister for the Environment, Owen Patterson, has visited flood torn Somerset and the Environment Agency, has had a bit of a tough time in the media. It has started to open up a few interesting questions and issues around who is actually accountable and who is responsible for flood response. Undoubtedly facing persistent flooding problems is deeply distressing for those affected and it is far from unreasonable to expect the response from the State to be swift, appropriate and well managed.

But who should respond and who has a say over what the local priorities are is perhaps a more complex question to answer. On further investigation it would appear that our system of local public administration has a few dark corners that are somewhat enlightening to explore.

One slightly dark corner that the media seems to have paid little attention to is the Local ‘Internal Drainage Board’ (IDB). What may come as a surprise to many, especially if you do not operate in a particularly high risk area, is that these IDBs are actually part of the complex firmament of democratically elected local bodies.

Internal Drainage Boards as local public organisations are specifically charged by legislation to supervise matters of water level management.  Whilst current powers are determined by the Land Drainage Acts of 1991 and its precursor of 1930, the antecedents of these curious bodies can be traced back to Henry II in 1297.   Not surprisingly, their boundaries are not coterminous with principal local authorities, but instead with water courses.

The 121 IDBs are distributed across the low lying areas of England and Wales, such as the Somerset Levels, Fens or Romney Marshes. Board members are elected by the IDB ratepayers and may sit alongside appointees.  Herein lies another oddity: each elector, usually an agricultural land holder, is awarded a number of votes related to the size of land holding or occupation – something rather reminiscent of voting rights pre- the 1832 Great Reform Act!  Whilst local authority members may sit as appointees, it is not remarkable to comment that control of IDBs holds little interest to political parties.

The very existence of the IDBs offers some interesting avenues to explore. One question that presents itself is around Government’s intention to respect that it is often the local community that holds local knowledge and solutions to problems existing within communities. Now, one can see that the Environment Agency itself has a few problems to deal with – it has not escaped media attention that the Agency is facing cuts at a time when the headline news is demonstrating that many local people are living with persistent flooding. Clearly one significant advantage of a large scale Agency is that it learns lessons from previous practice and can then make judgments as to the best way of dealing with problems. It can lay down standard operating processes and procedures and is in a position to balance a wide range of competing issues such as general environmental and ecological sustainability, whilst at the same time responding to social need.

However, if the flooding problems in the Somerset levels are allegedly a direct product of the failure to dredge rivers (and here we are not offering any opinion on that matter), should the decision be one that is taken locally or should it be one that conforms to a standard operating process? We have on one hand a body open to public scrutiny that is made up of local people and elected representatives who are resourced through a local precept taxation system and a national body that is answerable to citizens through national government. In this type of situation, very complex inter relationships develop between the principals and their agents!  This complexity is furthered by the addition of principal councils and DEFRA – who also have an interest in flood prevention policy and measures.

If, as we have seen through the introduction of locally elected Police and Crime Commissioners, government has an appetite for bringing public institutions closer to the people, then it may seem more than a little strange that in some of our most sensitive localities this argument over prioritisation is between Ministers, local people and a government agency. Perhaps we should look to promote a more visible role for the Local Drainage Board.

They are clearly important to local people in high risk areas, but with increasing pressure on local authorities to absorb ever increasing numbers of new houses and reports that new homes are being constructed on flood risk zones, we may need to think more deeply about how we manage this tension between control at a local level and the advantages of having a national response to such emergencies.

whiteman-philip

Philip Whiteman is a Lecturer at the Institute of Local Government Studies.  He has research interests in the impact of central government and regulators on the role, service delivery and performance of local government and other local bodies.  He is currently looking at developing a case for researching how guidance is an important instrument for steering local government over and above legislative instruments.

 

briggsIan Briggs is a Senior Fellow at INLOGOV, and sits on a rural Parish Council in Warwickshire. He has research interests in the development and assessment of leadership, performance coaching, organisational development and change, and the establishment of shared service provision.