Local Government

The disparities in housing and public health within the BAME community and the pandemic crisis

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Cllr. Ketan Sheth

Public Health is important: it prolongs life. A fundamental quality of Public Health is its preventative nature; prevention is far more effective and far less expensive than cure. Public Health is important because we are constantly striving to close the inequality gap between people and encourage equal opportunities for children, all ethnicities and genders. Health is a human right and we should be ensuring no one is disadvantaged, regardless of their background, their ethnicity or where they live. Becoming the voice for people who have no voice is our collective duty. Simply put, our influence on the improvement of someone’s health is a fundamental act of kindness.

Poor housing and living environments cause or contribute to many preventable diseases, such as respiratory, nervous system and cardiovascular diseases and cancer. An unsatisfactory home environment, with air and noise pollution, lack of green spaces, lack of personal space, poor ventilation and mobility options, all pose health risks, and in part have contributed to the spread of Covid-19. The disparities in housing and public health within the BAME community have persisted for decades cannot be doubted, and is underscored by a raft of research over the past six decades as well as highlighted by the recent analysis of the impact of Covid -19. The death rate among British black Africans and British Pakistanis from coronavirus in English hospitals is more than 2.5 times that of the white population.

What are the possible reasons? A third of all working-age Black Africans are employed in key worker roles, much more than the share of the White British population. Additionally Pakistani, Indian and Black African men are respectively 90%, 150% and 310% more likely to work in healthcare than white British men. While cultural practices and genetics have been mooted as possible explanations for the disparities, higher levels of social deprivation, particularly poor housing may be part of the cause, and that some ethnic groups look more likely than others to suffer economically from the lockdown.

Homelessness has grown in BAME communities, from 18% to 36% over the last two decades – double the presence of ethnic minorities in the population. BAME households are also far more likely to live in overcrowded, inadequate or fuel poor housing. What’s more, around a quarter of BAME households live in the oldest pre-1919 built homes. And their homes less often include safety features such as fire alarms, which is striking given the recent Grenfell Tower tragedy. Over-concentration of BAME households in the

neighbourhoods in London, linked to poor housing conditions and lower economic status all ensure negative impacts on health, all of which means lower life expectancy. The roll-out of Universal Credit is having greater effects on the living standards of BAME people since a larger percentage experience poverty, receive benefits and tax credits, and live in large families.
Larger household size also means that ethnic minorities are far more vulnerable to housing displacement because of the Bedroom Tax or subject to financial penalties if they do not move to a smaller home.
These stark facts, sharply bring to our attention the health, social and economic inequalities among our minority ethnic community, all of which are critical to understanding why some ethnic minority groups are bearing the brunt of Covid-19. In this time of reflection, it is not enough to observe; we must think about what more we can do, right now, to reduce the health, housing and economic vulnerabilities that our BAME communities are much more exposed to in these fragile times. Let’s act and prolong life together, as a flourishing community.

Cllr. Ketan Sheth is a Councillor for Tokyngton, Wembley in the London Borough of Brent. Ketan has been a councillor since 2010 and was appointed as Brent Council’s Chair of the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee in May 2016. Before his current appointment in 2016, he was the Chair of Planning, of Standards, and of the Licensing Committees. Ketan is a lawyer by profession and sits on a number of public bodies, including as the Lead Governor of Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust.

Councils Can…

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Victoria Ashcroft

In this post a local government professional reflects on their experience of working in local government during the covid-19 crisis. 

Working in a partnership role in a District Council has its challenges at the best of times, but working in a partnership role, from home, with kids and studying, in the midst of a crisis makes it all the more challenging. The work/life balance that we strive for is now melded together for the foreseeable future.

Since the start of COVID-19 things have moved rapidly (unusual in this line of work). We’ve been told by the Government we need to set up a Community Hub, we’ve been asked by the County Council for support, we know we need to support the voluntary sector, we know the community have mobilised in ways not seen before. These truly are unprecedented times.

Technology has never been so important; it’s no mean feat setting up an entire organisation to work remotely. The behind the scenes effort is huge. So far we’ve set up helplines, email addresses, a communications plan and produced numerous press releases. We’ve placed rough sleepers in as many available accommodation spaces as we can, we’ve set up a food bank, we’ve set up a scheme with the local supermarket to order food for isolators, this food is being delivered by our Elected Members, Solicitors and Environmental Health Officers to name a few – it’s all hands to the deck. The list goes on. We’ve closed the crematoriums and burial grounds and then opened them again. We’ve supported businesses too.

The next task is to call thousands of residents we’ve identified to see how they’re doing, if they have support in place, and if they need help or assistance or just a friendly chat. Quite reassuringly in the main they have good support networks in place but there’s a handful who need further assistance, signposting or a referral onto support agencies. Everyone is really appreciative of the call and thankful to the team of volunteers (diverted in from all departments across the organisation). They are so pleased to have not been forgotten.

Everyone is working hard, and all are doing something new and learning new things.   Such a mammoth task has been undertaken and it feels like there has been little recognition for the very important work being done in this sector, not that we need or want recognition, we are just doing our job contributing to the national effort. We’re not just bins and council tax.

Unprecedented seems to be the word of the moment, and it sums it all up perfectly.

But what comes next…we know domestic abuse will rise, we anticipate a rise in crime and anti-social behaviour, there are worries for the economy, we might lose friends or loved ones, our children will have lived through a crisis we could never have imagined. What we do know is that local government will not be the same again but how we fare in the long term remains to be seen…..

 

Victoria Ashcroft is a local government professional with almost 20 years’ experience in the sector. Currently her role is supporting business planning for the authority and she responsibility for a number of statutory duties and responsibilities. She gained her undergraduate degree in Social Science and Politics through The Open University and is now a student on INLOGOV’s Masters in Public Administration programme.

Situational irony, coronavirus and the French local elections

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Chris Game

One of Birmingham’s most enterprising theatres is one of its smallest, the Old Joint Stock – a studio theatre above a pub that was once the Birmingham Joint Stock Bank – which found itself an early and particularly unfortunate Covid-19 victim. For the Government’s March 16th announcement of the effective closure of all theatres came literally on the eve of the OJS’s five-day run of The White Plague, the scheduled second leg of a European tour, following a successful launch at Greenwich Theatre the previous week.

The title derives from an IRA-era sci-fi novel by Frank Herbert, whose vengeful Irish molecular biologist creates a particularly discriminating (in both senses) plague, in that, while men are the carriers, it kills only women. The feature of this Ferodo Bridges theatre production, though, is that audience members are given masks or goggles that ‘white out’ their vision, thereby supposedly immersing them in the world of the blinded victims.

I was sorry to miss such a topical example of immersive theatre, but found some consolation in its ill-timed cancellation providing a rather classier example of situational irony than the standard fire station burning down, or the Facebook complaint about how useless Facebook is.

Which was neat, as the same week offered a further, and more democratically pertinent, Covid-19 example of situational irony in France’s municipal elections – partly in the results, but mainly in their happening at all.

President Macron faced a dilemma. French municipal and mayoral elections happen only every six years. This year’s, therefore, would be the first since he became President in 2017, thanks rather amazingly to his newly created LREM party, La République En Marche!, winning a substantial majority in the National Assembly elections.

This, therefore, should have been Macron’s big chance to establish a grassroots power base. In Paris City Hall, Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo, notwithstanding a radical manifesto – including a referendum on Airbnb, plans for a “100 percent bicycle” city centre, and a municipal police force comprising 50% women – looked vulnerable, and there were early visions of scores of LREM mayors and thousands of councillors across the country.

That’s right, thousands – this is France, with over 900,000 candidates contesting seats in over 35,000 villages, towns and cities, though excluding this time, rather sadly, the 757 British citizens currently serving as municipal councillors – which, incidentally, is nearly 300 more than in all seven West Midlands metropolitan boroughs combined.

Macron himself, however, was at less than peak popularity, following months of protests and strikes – by the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) movement against rising fuel taxes, then by rail and health care workers, teachers and others against under-funding and pension reforms. Added to which, LREM’s Paris mayoral hopeful had had to abandon his candidacy in a sex video scandal – on Valentine’s Day!

And now France was showing the second highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Europe. Yet, having himself just shut down restaurants, museums, big sporting events, most stores, and the whole education system, Macron announced that the coming Sunday’s first round of the two-round municipal elections would go ahead – with strict sanitary conditions imposed, naturally.

The situational irony: the one man who could have saved his very personal party from a probable serious electoral thrashing, by doing the apparently responsible, expected thing and without any loss of face, chose not to.

Having merely a global citizen’s concern with French public health, I was actually quite pleased. Partly because French local elections are always fun to write about, but especially following the outcome of our own head of government’s Flip-Flop Friday.

In the morning of, yes, unlucky Friday 13th, Number 10 insisted – “driven by the experts”, of course – that May 7th’s local, mayoral, and Police & Crime Commissioner elections would go ahead, in defiance of the Electoral Commission’s postponement recommendation and Electoral Administrators’ warning of possibly insufficient polling station staff.

But then, literally within hours, all elections were off – and not, as proposed by the Electoral Commission, until the autumn, but for a year.

What makes French local elections fun? Well, not least – and making Macron’s go-ahead seem even more extraordinary than Johnson’s dithering – because there are just so many of them and they really are so genuinely local.

England’s local government currently comprises 341 principal councils, of which just Rutland, fractionally, has a population of under 40,000. By contrast, over 98% of France’s 35,000+ communes have under 20,000, and over half under 500.

Voting – in larger communes at least – is by proportional representation, potentially over two rounds, and mainly through party lists, which Parity Laws decree must comprise as many women as men, listed alternately. Mayors are indirectly elected: voters electing the council, the council then electing the mayor.

Most impressive attribute of French local elections, though, is that voters like them, and like voting in them, much more than in National Assembly elections. Evidence Exhibit 1: in reporting turnout in even local elections, the French way is to cite not the turnout percentage but ‘Abstentions’ – and then to worry when in 2014 the 36.45% abstentions (they’re also very precise) constituted “a record high” .

Exhibit 2: my favourite English language election preview, bemoaning how coronavirus was “eclipsing the elections in national conversation”, because “87% of the French people are discussing the coronavirus, while ONLY 52% are discussing the upcoming elections” (my emphasis). The last time over half an English electorate were caught discussing upcoming local elections being …?

Nevertheless, there clearly was concern that, even with voters queuing three feet apart, their own pens poised to sign the register, and voting machines wiped with hydro-alcoholic gel, polling stations were almost custom-made germ-spreading venues, particularly for older people.

Still, however, they recorded an estimated abstention rate of “up to 56%”, and a turnout therefore of around 45% – immediately seized on by the media as an “historic low”. In context, though, the last time turnout in our metropolitan district elections, for example, touched 45% in a non-General Election year was 1990 – poll tax year.  The recent average is 33%.

Macron’s decision was surprising, avoidable, predictably politically costly, and – given the second round’s almost immediate cancellation – probably wrong. It was not, though, without its integrity.

 

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.

What if December 12th were repeated in the May mayorals?

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Chris Game

I’m not unrealistic.  I didn’t expect the Queen in the few hundred words written for her Queen’s Speech to chatter on that much about local government and councils – and she didn’t.  I did think, though, they might get some attention in the 150-page Background Briefing Notes.  But, no.  In the literally brief note on English Devolution (pp.109-10), ‘councils’ per se aren’t mentioned.  The search did, however, make me realise how crowded it’s going to be out there, as “each part of the country” gets “to decide its own destiny”.

The Government “remains committed” to the Northern Powerhouse, Midlands Engine, Western Gateway, and, I think, the Oxford-Cambridge Arc. The 38 Local Enterprise Partnerships certainly aren’t going anywhere soon.  Indeed, they may well be hoping to get their hands on the UK Shared Prosperity Fund that will replace EU Structural and Investment Funds. And quite possibly too on the PM’s own £3.6 billion Towns Fund, with, for starters, 100 Town Deal Boards, chaired “where appropriate” by someone from the private sector.

Then there are the UK Government agencies that Johnson wants to relocate out of London, with their existing civil servants or any who aren’t “super-talented weirdo” enough to pass the Dominic Cummings test.

The one democratic element of this increasingly crowded world that does receive more than a passing mention in the Briefing Notes are Mayoral Combined Authorities (CAs) and City Region Mayors, with talk of increasing the number of mayors and doing more devo deals. There weren’t many stats in this section, but one did catch my eye: “37 per cent of residents in England, including almost 50 per cent in the North, are now served by city region mayors with powers and money to prioritise local issues.”

With CA mayoral elections coming up in early May, I did a few quick sums. The current party split among the nine elected mayors, including London, is 5-4 to Labour.  The population split, though, is close to 3-1, with Mayor Andy Street’s West Midlands contributing over half the Conservative total.  And Street’s victory over Labour’s Siôn Simon in May 2017 was knife-edge: by 0.7% of the 523,000 votes cast.

I sense you’re ahead of me.  If, in the coming May elections, West Midlands voters were to return a Labour mayor, leaving Conservative mayors governing, say, barely one in eight of that 37% of residents, would a Conservative PM still be as enthusiastic about devolution to mayoral CAs?  We know for near-certain that Theresa May wouldn’t have been, but Johnson, as on most things, is less predictable. 

Anyway, it seemed worth asking: what would happen in the May mayoral elections, which include London this time, if everyone voted just as they did in December’s General Election?  Happily, Centre for Cities’ Simon Jeffrey got there first, so the stats are his, the interpretation mine.

First, though, a quick reminder of the broader context of those 2017 mayoral elections, and what’s happened since.  When Andy Street launched his bid for the West Midlands mayoralty, and even when he was officially selected as Conservative candidate, there looked like being only five of these new CA mayors.

Moreover, all five – Greater Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield City Regions, Tees Valley, and West Midlands – might easily, given their borough councils’ political make-ups, have produced Labour ‘metro mayors’.  Whereupon, it seems likely that, to say the least, Prime Ministerial enthusiasm for serious devolution to metro mayoral CAs would have waned somewhat.

However, things changed. Sheffield’s election, following a dispute over the inclusion of Derbyshire local authorities, was postponed until 2018, and two far less metropolitan (and more Conservative-inclined) CAs were established – West of England (Bristol) and Cambridgeshire & Peterborough – just in time for the 2017 elections. 

With Tees Valley also going Conservative, Prime Minister May saw an initially possible 0-5 redwash turn into a remarkable 4-2 triumph – as reported on this blog. The political merits and possibilities of devolution, particularly to the West Midlands – bearing in mind that Labour overwhelmingly controlled Birmingham Council and formed the largest party group in five of the other six boroughs – suddenly seemed much more obvious.

Since then, though, the pendulum has swung. A reconfigured Sheffield CA and new North of Tyne CA have both elected Labour mayors, evening up the CA party balance at 4-4, but giving a score among the now ‘Big 5’ metros (populations over 1.3 million) of 4-1 to Labour, including Greater London Mayor, Sadiq Khan.

Jeffrey’s sums show that Mayor Khan would be re-elected easily, likewise Labour’s Steve Rotheram in Liverpool.  In Greater Manchester, Labour’s Andy Burnham would be re-elected, but with a considerably reduced majority.  And the collapsing ‘red wall’ would have more than doubled Conservative Mayor Ben Houchen’s majority in Tees Valley.

And so to the West Midlands, which also saw plenty of “Red wall turning blue”, “No such thing any more as a Labour safe seat” headlines. It felt as if the Conservative vote had to be ahead, and it was … but by under 3,000 out of 1.18 million, or 0.2%! 

Yes, even replicating the Conservatives’ most decisive electoral win for a generation, it could be that tight.  And, if it were Labour’s eventual candidate who edged it, that would see Labour metro mayors as the elected heads of government in London and all four largest city region CAs, representing nearly a third of the English population. ‘Everything still to play for’ seems an understatement.

Chris Game - picChris 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.

Spending beyond Your Means during a Recession? Not So Much for Local Governments Constrained by Fiscal Rules

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Lang (Kate) Yang
The Great Recession, which started nearly a decade ago, may feel like a distant memory for some, as the United States economy is expanding for a ninth consecutive year. However, local governments in the nation still experience turmoil in their finances. National League of Cities’ 2016 City Fiscal Conditions report shows that city revenue has recovered to about 96 percent of precession (2006) levels. While many cities have improved service provision efficiency or cut back services and workforce during the recession, another option to weather the shock is to run a deficit and spend beyond the means. While structural or persistent fiscal imbalances are undesirable for local officials and can even lead to credit rating downgrades, deficit financing during recessionary periods may be justified for maintaining the necessary level of public service provision when regular tax and other revenue collection does not suffice.

Local governments achieve deficit spending through either borrowing or dipping into their reserves, if they have built one going in to a recession. Neither option is free. Borrowing from banks or investors on the municipal bond market requires interest payments, while leaving that reserve alone usually means investment returns. To what extent local governments are willing to take on a deficit during the recession depends on factors including local governing structure, managerial preference and expertise, level of savings, access to the debt market, and the capacity of paying back debt or replenishing reserves after the recession ends.

It is the last factor and its relationship with tax and expenditure limits that I explore in the recent paper published in Local Government Studies. Tax and expenditure limits are fiscal rules imposed on local governments by state governments (through legislations) and statewide voters (through referendums) to limit how much revenue localities can raise in any given year. For example, the famous Proposition 13 in California limits annual real estate tax on a parcel of property to one percent of its assessed value and the assessed value can only increase by a maximum of two percent per year. For cities constrained by a tax and expenditure limit, their capacity of paying back debt or replenishing reserves is predictably limited. The paper explores whether these cities were less likely to deficit spend during and after the Great Recession than unconstrained cities.

Data collected from the largest 50 cities’ comprehensive annual financial report show that cities subject to a tax and expenditure limit indeed were less likely to spend beyond their means. Their expenditure levels grew at a slower pace. As a result, their net assets, which are assets net of any payback liabilities, decreased at a slower pace as well. The difference between cities subject to tax and expenditure limits and unconstrained cities was especially pronounced immediately after the crisis (years 2011 and 2012), possibly because cities first pursued other means of weathering the shock than cutbacks and because the hit on city finance is delayed compared to the hit on the general economy.

Many cities saw their streetlights shut off, community centers shuttered, and bus services cancelled during the recession. While some may rather prefer the cuts than spending, others may see the value of maintaining a stable level of service provision despite decreased revenue collection. Although the paper refrains from evaluating whether deficit spending in general is beneficial to city governments and residents, it is ultimately a decision up to the localities. The paper finds that fiscal rules imposed by a higher-level government have an impact on city financial decisions. This finding indicates that deficit financing following a recession is no longer a “pure” local decision. Financial management conservatism caused by tax and expenditure limits might have contributed to more painful cuts in some cities than others.

 

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Lang (Kate) Yang is an assistant professor at George Washington University. Her research interest includes state and local government taxation, budgeting, and financial management. Her recent publications in Public Budgeting & Finance and National Tax Journal examine how local governments respond to fiscal rules imposed by higher-level governments.

The challenges of being part of the local government family

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Catherine Staite

Local government is made up of very diverse institutions, in terms of size, tiers, geography, demography and politics. No two local authorities are the same, even those who seem similar in many ways. Each has a unique combination of history, cultures, structures, systems and relationships.  Each will have different strengths and weakness. Some councils are flourishing and others are floundering. Yet we often refer to ‘local government’ as if it was one thing, when it clearly is not.  Some of that sense of ‘family’ has its roots in long traditions of competitiveness and rivalry as well as cooperation and mutual support. Some can be traced back to the need to be united against the ‘common enemy’ – an over-centralised and capricious central government machine – regardless of any allegiance owed by local politicians to their party when in power.

Local government has occupied a rather eminent moral high ground in recent years.  Demonstrably the most efficient part of the public sector, it has remained remarkably resilient in the face of cuts which would have brought any other sector to its knees.  Many councils have used the pressure, generated by cuts in income from central government, to drive change, experimentation and innovation but others have not.  Some have become highly commercial, with varying degrees of success, while others seek to avoid all risk. Some have streamlined their corporate functions and outsourced support services, in order to be able to focus their remaining resources on frontline services.  Some have engaged communities to co-produce and maintain services which were previously the sole responsibility of the council, while others have simply cut non-statutory services. Some have developed excellent and productive working relationships between officers and members. Others are known for toxic and destructive internal and external relationships.  Some are supporting and developing their staff to be adaptable, flexible and resilient. Others have downgraded their officer leadership capacity and hollowed out their organisations to the point that they cannot respond to a crisis.

In spite of so much divergence in organisational structures, systems and behaviours, the sense of being part of a family remains.  Officers and members share ideas, through writing in the trade press, meeting, talking, arguing and sharing.  That level of interaction may mislead us into thinking we have a good picture of what is going on but since the demise of the Audit Commission, no-one has an overview of the state of local government, in all its rich political and organisational diversity.  Councils are quick to boast of their achievements, as evidenced by the burgeoning awards business, but very slow to admit to their failures. Its no-one’s job to counsel, warn or intervene when misguided choices have resulted in serious risks to the vulnerable.

As is the case with our own families, the notable failure of a family member reflects badly on all. Our first reactions may be to blame them and to disassociate ourselves from them. We may say, quite rightly, that councils are sovereign bodies. They make their choices and they take the consequences. What duties, then, do other councils owe them when bad choices bring disaster? Perhaps they owe them the duties we all owe to our own family members when they go astray: to challenge them to listen, to accept responsibility, to explain themselves, to put things right but above all to learn from their failures. We should support them if they are willing to come clean and share that learning so all can take heed. That way, perhaps, some small good can come out of catastrophic failure.

Catherine Staite 02Catherine Staite is Professor of Public Management and Director of Public Service Reform at the University of Birmingham. As Director of Public Service Reform, Professor Catherine Staite leads the University’s work supporting the transformation and reform of public services, with a particular focus on the West Midlands.  As a member of INLOGOV, Catherine leads our on-line and blended programmes, Catherine also helps to support INLOGOV’s collaboration with a wide range of organisations, including the Local Government Association  and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives as well as universities in the USA, Europe, Australia and China. She was named by the Local Government Chronicle, in 2015 and 2016 as one of the top 100 most influential people in local government.