Local Government

It’s not Labour or the LGA who are out of touch. It’s you, Minister!

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Chris Game

Are you up to speed with your local finance jargon? If so, I wonder if you can explain the difference between a ‘widows tax’ and a ‘Bridget Jones tax’? No, it’s no use reaching for your £445 copy of the CIPFA Guide to Local Government Finance. The answer’s not in there. It’s the Conservative press you’re after, and specifically the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph.

Monday’s edition of the Mail (that’s Monday, 6th May) thought it would be fun to scare its Bank Holiday readers with the news that “Labour plots ‘Bridget Jones tax’: Party accused of demanding an end to council tax discounts for singletons”.

Evidently the rest of what we once called Fleet Street was out to lunch, because it wasn’t until Thursday 9th that the Telegraph caught up with the story, by which time it obviously had to invent its own slant: “Town halls seek to levy ‘widows tax’”.

They are of course exactly the same thing – and neither, as we’ll see, remotely qualifies as news. But let’s stay with the papers for a bit. The Mail’s story opened as follows:

“Labour has been accused of plotting a ‘Bridget Jones tax’ on singletons as its local authorities demand an end to council tax discounts for those living alone.
In a formal submission to ministers, the Local Government Association [LGA] is calling for the power to end the 25 per cent discount offered in recognition of the fact single people place fewer demands on local services.
More than seven million are thought to benefit from the discount, at a cost of around £2.7 billion a year.”

It’s an interesting bit of reporting. The basic story is broadly accurate. One proposal in the LGA’s 24-page submission to the Government’s June Spending Review does indeed call for “the full and unconstrained ability to vary locally all council tax discounts including the single person discount”. In fact, it’s a kind of ‘belt and braces’ demand, because it could be seen as already implicit in the LGA’s more comprehensive proposal for “the removal of restrictions on council tax, so that councils can determine with their communities the appropriate level of tax and be accountable through local elections for doing so”.

The interesting bit is that the LGA is Conservative-led and Conservative-controlled – the party having been in control of over half of all English and Welsh councils following last year’s local elections. The Chairman of the LGA is therefore Conservative – Sir Merrick Cockell, from the Royal, and very Conservative, Borough of Kensington & Chelsea – and the Conservatives are also the largest group on the Association’s Executive. It would represent quite a coup for the minority representation of Labour authorities, if they had been able to hijack almost certainly the single most important document the LGA will produce this year – were it true.

Having already implied that the LGA was Labour-run, there wasn’t any real need for the Mail to offer further explanation, but there was a rather limp mention of that all-purpose stand-by for bewildered journalists – their anonymous ‘sources’. In this case, the “sources claim the campaign to end the discount is being driven by Labour authorities including Liverpool, Sheffield, Islington and Exeter”.

“and Exeter”. Brilliant. The sources certainly earned their pay-off there: three of the oldest recidivists around, and then, out of the blue, Exeter, to add real authenticity. A council that last year set one of the lowest district council tax rates in the country – so low that this year it was specifically allowed by Ministers to increase its bills by £5. A dangerous trouble maker, if ever there was one.

But it was more than enough for Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, who not only ran with it, but suggested a name for what would have to be presented, of course, as a new tax: “There is clearly a well-orchestrated campaign being pushed forward by Labour councillors to target the most vulnerable. This is a Bridget Jones tax and shows how out of touch Labour are”.

Not, however, to quite the degree that his colleague, Brandon Lewis, appears to be. The Local Government Minister explained to the Daily Telegraph that it is in fact the LGA that “is completely out of touch by calling for stealthy council tax hikes – how strange they didn’t have the courage of their convictions to highlight this before election day.”

So let me get this straight. Our Conservative Minister would have liked it publicised, during the county council elections campaign, that the Conservative-led LGA was calling for stealthy council tax hikes? I find it a little surprising, but, if that was what he really, really wanted, he could have announced it himself – because the whole Spending Review submission – including, in bold type, the council tax discounts bid – had been produced back in March and had been in the public domain and available for every one of us to read throughout the campaign.

So which is it? Had he not read it, or forgotten it, or not realised its potential political exploitability? Whatever, I don’t think he’s in much of a position to make accusations about others being out of touch.

game

Chris 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.

Bring back committees – all is forgiven!

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Andrew Coulson

Governance by Committees goes back to the origins of local government in the UK. It precedes the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 which created a legal framework whereby local government can only do what central government says it can do. It is the natural way to run an organisation. The boards of directors who run companies (or quangos) are committees. The trustees of a charity are a committee. A parliament is a committee – albeit a large and unwieldy one.

Of course not everyone on a committee is equal. The Chair has a unique position, with control of agendas, public relations, and often patronage. The secretary writes the minutes – with the subtle power to play up or play down some of what has happened. The treasurer controls the money, day to day.

Committees served local government well for at least 150 years. They were the envy of public administrators in many other parts of the world. Harold Laski promoted them, in 1935, as an extension of Athenian democracy – the advantages of a city-state running its own affairs. Forty five years later, George Jones saw them as “an essential element of a pluralist society” and a bulwark of countervailing power against an over-mighty centralising state. Thousands of councillors, over the years, learnt their trade in committees, listening to officials explaining what they wanted to do, and more experienced councillors asking questions, and having a real sense of ownership in the decisions that resulted.

Why then were committees in English local government so brusquely brushed away, to be replaced by directly elected mayors (the Labour government’s clearly preferred choice at the time) or cabinets and leaders? Why, in contrast, were they preserved, in emasculated form, in Development Control and Licensing Committees, and in councils representing populations of less than 85,000? And why are they now slowly coming back, under the liberating powers of the Localism Act, through which perhaps as many as 30 councils may have moved back to governance by committees by 2014?

By 2000 the system had, perhaps, grown out of control. The desire of councillors to be involved in every significant decision led to a proliferation of committees and subcommittees. Birmingham had more than 60. Many had delegated powers. They enabled small cliques of councillors to get things done, but many of them could not be described as open or democratic. This system also meant that cross-cutting matters (and most matters in local government are cross cutting to greater or lesser extent) went the rounds of several committees before a final decision was made – a slow and frustrating process, especially for officials. The system institutionalised silos – as each committee tenaciously defended its interests and its budgets. And it was often taken over by the party-group system, which ensured that almost all the important decisions were taken in private meetings of a political party before the official meetings in public.

It is sometimes said that committees were abolished because of Hilary Armstrong’s frustrations as a backbench member of the unwieldy and ineffective Education Committee of Durham County Council, on which she sat before becoming the MP who took the Local Government Act through the House of Commons. But it is also clear that much was wrong, that the system needed to be streamlined, and that it struggled in the new emerging world of partnerships and contracting out. F expressed in The Audit Commission summed up the frustrations in its 1990 pamphlet, We can’t go on meeting like this.

But the grass is not always greener on the other side of the hill. We can now see the limitations of mayors and cabinets. An over-concentration of power in a small number of hands, which may not be representative, or reflect the plurality of interests in something as complex as a city or county. A still confusing lack of clarity as to whether paid officials or politicians hold the real power. Weakness in standing up to bosses in London – and a creeping centralisation.

Above all, councillors are not content – especially backbench and Opposition councillors, who could make major contributions under the committee system but have almost no similar opportunities with cabinets or mayors.

And so the tide turned. The Localism Act enshrined a Conservative promise ahead of the 2010 election to give councils the chance to return to committee governance. There was no great rush – only four councils changed in 2012 (Nottinghamshire County, the London Borough of Sutton, Brighton and Hove, and South Gloucestershire). They brought in streamlined systems, with much power in the hands of Policy and Resources Committees or equivalent. These may involve little more than giving voting and speaking rights to Opposition councillors on what is still, effectively, a small cabinet or executive. But at least another 10 councils are likely to make the change at their 2013 Annual General Meetings. Others are talking about it or considering it.

INLOGOV is one of the few places that has been monitoring this change, and assisting councils to think through the issues – how to plan the detail to get the best out of a return to committees while avoiding the unsatisfactory practices that could be a problem in the past.

We have convened two workshops for councils or councillors considering making the change – and a third will take place on 27 June. Councillors and officers from councils which have changed will be present. We will not take a stand, that one system is right and the other wrong – it depends on the detail, and on local circumstances. But we will defend the right of councils to make the change, and to govern themselves as they think fit (in fact we would like to see a much wider set of systems open for consideration and experiment). If the previous workshops are anything to go by, the debate will be lively and extremely well informed.

To book a place at the workshop on 27th June, complete this booking form.

andrew coulson blog

Dr. Andrew Coulson is Lead Consultant on Overview and Scrutiny at INLOGOV, University of Birmingham, with wide experience of Overview and Scrutiny. He has recently launched one of the first assessed qualifications on the subject. His further research interests include partnerships and governance, economic and environmental strategies, and local government in Central and Eastern Europe.

UKIP exceeds expectations but what do the results tell us?

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Karin Bottom

It is now clear that UKIP exceeded most expectations in the local elections on May the 2nd, garnering around 26 per cent of the vote. Yet as the dust settles, we must now ask what these results mean? Of course, at this stage it is hard to be sure and a certain amount speculation is involved but one thing is clear, the mainstream has a fight on its hands.

To label UKIP’s support as mere articulation of protest is naive, simplistic and lazy. More to the point, the ‘protest label’ implies that any vote for parties outside the mainstream – whatever their hue – is pathologically wrong and requires correction: this is not healthy analysis. While a number of voters may well be sending a message to their usual party of choice or just the ‘big three’ in general, a proportion of the population does appear to support UKIP and what it stands for. The sentiments which underpin much of the party’s support are also hard for the mainstream to swallow, particularly on the left and though all three are beginning to see the bigger picture and respond, they can’t escape from the fact that they are all linked with the problems the country faces right now: Labour is seen as responsible while the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are denigrated for not reversing the situation. UKIP on the other hand claims to offer the electorate solutions and has no track record of failure, a very attractive quality which – given the right circumstances – can facilitate substantial success.

Yet, perhaps the most interesting questions concerning UKIP ask, what is it exactly? Is it a pressure group or is it a party? Hitherto labelled as a single issue organisation it has never shied away from its long-term key objective which is a retreat from the European Union. Recently though, it has expanded its arguments, rhetoric and goals. Initially marketing itself as a force for change, it now seems to hold a somewhat longer term view of its future.

Before the count was in, Farage’s discussion with Evan Davis on Radio 4’s Today Programme was particularly revealing when he when equated UKIP’s potential for bringing about change with that generated by the SDP’s success in the early 1980s. He argued that UKIP now has the capacity to be part of the political solution and this suggests that the party is developing in a new direction: indeed, the BBC’s Nick Robinson now argues that UKIP has made the transition from pressure group to political party. Only time will tell if this is the case but one thing is for sure, speculation and judgment of UKIP will only intensify.

Next year’s elections to the European Parliament and the 2015 General Election will certainly go some way in establishing the nature of UKIP and the type of organisation it really is; but in the meantime, its message is resonating with a sizeable proportion of the electorate and the mainstream is not sure what to do.

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Karin Bottom is Lecturer in British Politics and Research Methods at INLOGOV, University of Birmingham. Her core research areas comprise parties (particularly small and the BNP), party systems and party theory. She is particularly interested in concepts of relevance and how national level theories can be utilised at the sub-national level.

Local elections: challenges and opportunities for new administrations

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Catherine Staite

Following the elections, both new and continuing local authority administrations, of all political hues, will face significant challenges. The ‘irresistible force’ of increased demand is meeting the ‘immovable object’ of financial stringency, creating an annual cycle of despair, where councils struggle to do ‘more for less’ – something which becomes progressively hard to achieve. Many will manage to balance their books till 2014 but face a financial cliff edge thereafter.

These apparently irreconcilable pressures may actually be the saving of local government by creating pressure for change – if it can reimagine and reinvent itself. What local government need to do in response to these challenges is less important than how it needs to be.

Councils are moving to commissioning from direct delivery, to supporting independence rather than dependence and to better understanding of the capacity of communities to improve their own lives. Local authorities are good at working in partnership – with health, the police, education and business. They need to get three other key relationships right; with the communities they serve, with each other and with central government.

Local authorities need to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the diverse and complex capacities and needs of their communities. Engagement should be woven into the fabric of local government. There is a wealth of evidence that shows people do know and care about their local services. Without this public support no real transformation of local areas and services will be possible. The relationship between local authorities and their communities should therefore be less benefactor-to-beneficiary and more partner-to-partner – underpinned by mutual respect.

Many local authorities already work collaboratively to bring down costs and improve quality. This patchwork of ad hoc arrangements is often driven by enthusiastic individuals and is consequently fragile. Cooperation between local authorities is too often constrained by parochialism and soured by old rivalries, too much defending of council’s sovereignty and not enough drive to deliver efficiency and improved outcomes. The experience of successful collaboration tells us it should be the norm and not the exception. Councils will have to explain why they are cutting services or ceasing to invest for the future before doing everything possible to reduce costs and improve outcomes by working together.

The relationship and the balance of power between central and local government generates much debate. We have the most centralised model of government in Western Europe. Central government demonstrates a lack of trust in local government and an abiding reluctance to devolve financial control although they delegate to councils the implementation of their funding cuts. If central government acts like a disapproving parent, local government is likely to act like a recalcitrant child. Neither set of behaviours will deliver the outcomes that the Coalition and local authorities want to achieve for the people they are all are supposed to be serving.

It is time for local government to take the initiative in reshaping their relationship with communities, each other and central government. Local government is remarkably efficient and reliable. Serious service failures are only newsworthy because they are so rare. That competence confers authority and local government needs to get off the back foot, stop waiting for the green light from central government and make the changes needed to meet the challenges of the future.

Catherine Staite

Catherine Staite is the Director of INLOGOV. She provides consultancy and facilitation to local authorities and their partners, on a wide range of issues including on improving outcomes, efficiency, partnership working, strategic planning and organisational development, including integration of services and functions.

Do we want fewer councillors, or should we make better use of those we have?

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Andrew Coulson

“What are councillors for?” was the question asked at a recent INLOGOV event.

“To take the rap for cuts” was one of the responses.

“We should have fewer councillors, in large single-member wards” was another response. To which the reply came back, sharply, that this would lead to lower quality of councillors, as those who were entrenched in safe seats refused to move on. Young people, women, and people from minorities would find it even harder to get selected. If what we need is a high quality of councillors then the only reliable way of achieving this is to have a large pool of councillors, from which the best can be chosen for office.

The county council elections also provide food for thought on these matters. In six of the counties where there have been boundary changes these will result in fewer councillors (in most of these cases the Boundary Commission was responding to proposals from the councils concerned): Bucks -8, Glos -10, Northants -16, Oxon -11, Somerset -3. This is is a situation where we already have by far the highest ratio of residents to councillors anywhere in Europe – and the more residents a councillor is supposed to represent, and the more distinct communities, the harder it becomes to properly represent local feelings and interests.

So what are councillors for? OK, they are a channel for local residents with grievances in their wards, opposing planning applications (on rare occasions supporting them), and, when opportunities arise, working with local activists in their communities, or taking a lead themselves, to create new initiatives, new responses to situations and needs, or to openings created by new legislation. But, if they are to go beyond this and engage directly with senior officers and act strategically, then a certain level of knowledge is needed and plenty of confidence as well. And the way local government works at present does little to encourage this – hence, perhaps, the complaints that most councillors are redundant and that we should have fewer of them.

The Local Government Act 2000 gave almost all the strategic decision making to small cabinets or individual mayors or cabinet members, or, increasingly, to paid officials (“officers” – does not the military language say it all?) It removed most of the powers of the Full Council, and with that most of the opportunities for councillors who are not members of the cabinet to contribute to strategic decision-making. With decisions taken elsewhere, full council meetings degenerated, often into slanging matches between the main political parties structured (if that is the word) around resolutions which reflect national priorities or party campaigns.

Yet a council should be a Parliament for its area. It is the demonstration of the benefits which can come from the right, expressed in the European Charter of Local Self-Government, for a town or village to elect its own representatives to run its own affairs, to the greatest extent that this is possible, and with sufficient resources to make real choices. That means debates on local issues, discretion over budgets, and votes when appropriate, giving councillors the power to give their local leaderships a bloody nose when they deserve it.

Scrutiny should be a facility to assist the full council in its role of holding the executive to account (and other agencies active in the local area also). This corresponds to the role of select committees in the Westminster or Cardiff parliaments. These are best known for their set-piece occasions when they hold bankers, the chief executives of multinational companies, senior civil servants, or ministers, to account. It is often forgotten that their bread and butter work is the collection of evidence on matters of policy or public administration, which is enshrined in detailed reports – more consultancy or research than ritual humiliation for the TV cameras or a court of law. It is that kind of detailed investigation that scrutiny committees in local government do best, working across party allegiances to discover the truth and offer recommendations on the best way forward.

The Local Government Act 2000 put scrutiny in hoc to cabinets, with no mention of the full council. This weak position is further entrenched when scrutiny officers double as policy officers supporting the Cabinet (it is no secret that scrutiny, like the select committees, depends profoundly on able and independent-minded officers or clerks who can turn the often rambling questionings of politicians into sharp, focussed and often critical reports and recommendations).

That is why a small but increasing number of councils are returning to decision-making by all-party committees. Not because decisions are made more quickly that way (though councils can make quick decision when they have the will to). Not because it makes a single person responsible for a decision (though the chairs of strong committees are often at least as powerful as cabinet members). Not because it allows decisions to be made in public (any more than do cabinets, where the real decisions are made in private before the public meetings, making the public meetings almost redundant). But because it involves all the elected councillors in decision-making, enables those newly elected to participate from Day 1, keeps officers and committee members on their toes, and properly respects the expertise of Opposition councillors and their rights to ask questions and to probe the logic of officers.

Where you have government by committees, no-one any longer questions what councillors are for.

andrew coulson blog

Dr. Andrew Coulson is Lead Consultant on Overview and Scrutiny at INLOGOV, University of Birmingham, with wide experience of Overview and Scrutiny. He has recently launched one of the first assessed qualifications on the subject. His further research interests include partnerships and governance, economic and environmental strategies, and local government in Central and Eastern Europe.

On 27 June INLOGOV will be holding its third day-workshop on Governance by Committees. Many of the councils who changed their governance arrangements in April 2012 will be present, along with other councils who will by then have changed. This is a unique opportunity to consider the merits of the change. For further information see the advert and booking form.