Modern Local Government

Janice Morphet

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780761943754, 9780761943747
• eBook ISBN: 9781446232996
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This text provides a systematic review of the reform of local government since the election of New Labour in 1997. Modern Local Government:

" provides the relevant historical context for the predicted ?death of local government? in the Thatcher era

" explains the New Labour agenda for local government and the components which make up local governance in England today

" offers substantive discussion of: decision-making; community strategies; performance measures; procurement, privatization, partnerships; the role of e-government; and standards and corruption

" analyzes the implications of reform at different spatial scales - from the local to the regional - and offers a rich discussion of the ?new localism?

" presents an overview of the role of European Union legislation in areas like employment, environment and competition.

" concludes with a consideration of the possible futures for local government including local area agreements, local public service boards and choice.

Modern Local Government is a unique assessment of local government reform from the perspective of both local and central government, which is fully informed by an analysis of the role of the European Union. It will be the key resource for all students of local government in planning and related disciplines.

1

INTRODUCTION

Why another book on local government? The answer to this question is simple. Since 1997, local government has changed more than at any time since the 1880s. Although those who have lived through the reorganisation of local authority boundaries in 1963, 1972, 1987, and the 1990s might argue that these changes were more significant; since the 1997 general election local decision making, the power of elected councillors and role of local government have all changed. In the past, local authorities were ‘creatures’ of statute, unable to undertake any activity unless specifically enabled. Now, although they do not have a general power of competence, the duty of a local authority to promote the well-being of its area, together with accompanying powers, mark a key change. Local trading has now re-emerged, and the review of local government finance will encourage new ways of raising local taxation.

Yet, much of the press coverage and academic reflection of local government suggest that it remains under siege. Proposals for the reform of Children’s Services are seen to be part of a major strategy for power and control of local government by the central government Department responsible. Concerns are said to be expressed by the Department for Transport that it was losing the local war for funding to children and social care and that this encouraged re-examination of central control for the ring fencing of transport funding. The continuation of central targetry does nothing for joined-up working at the local level or provide the basis for action to meet local needs.

In all of this, local government continues to consider itself to be the victim. If it steps out of line, even with new freedoms and flexibilities, it assumes that there are sanctions from central government departments. The Local Government Association calls this a ‘grudgingly instrumentalist’ approach (LGA 2003b). Although the ‘centre’ is seen to support local democracy for directly elected health or police committees (Blears 2003), local authority democracy does not seem to be as attractive as dedicated single-purpose boards in helping central government departments to achieve their local targets. David Miliband challenged local authorities to come forward with their own brand of neighbourhood solutions in his double devolution formula (Miliband 2006a, 2006b).

How has local government coped with these changes since 1997? Has it been able to join up at the local level despite more ‘silo-based targetry’ from its central government partners (Perri 6 et al. 2002)? How can local government regenerate a sense of its own worth – a reconnection with civic pride and renewal which is most frequently associated with Joseph Chamberlain’s Birmingham of the 1880s (Marsh 1994)? Local government does not have to fight for recognition elsewhere in the world where its role in government is enshrined in written constitutions and where local authorities do not have to seek specific legal permission to act. Does this make local government more effective and the centre weaker? If proposals to move central departments out of London were progressed as a result of the Lyons’s Independent Review (Lyons 2004), would this coincide with downsizing their functions?

This book considers the structure and functions of local government after a major period of reform and offers a reassessment of its role. It provides a means of understanding how these reforms work with the existing services and in an increasingly connected way. Rather than seeing these reforms as instrumentalist, the book argues that local government is moving to an international norm for local governance within the state. Given the continuing pace of change, it offers an analytical framework within which future changes can be understood.

As with any change, there is always a distinction to be made between underlying trends and influences and those that attract daily media interest. At times, when a particularly strong news story breaks, it is hard to make any sense of the general direction of change. Local government is as prone to short-run stories as any other form of politics. These long- and short-term trends sometimes coincide and at other times collide. However, it is important to understand the role of both in change.

Why local government?

To find the answer to this question, many commentators have turned to the last reform of local government in the late 1880s. Why was it seen to be necessary then and have we lost our way now? For many, the legacy of Joseph Chamberlain in Birmingham, or other civic pioneers, seems to hold the key. In the 1920s and 1930s, Winifred Holtby’s novel South Riding holds no rosy view of local government but still defines it as being the first line of defence against poverty (Holtby 1936). At the same time, Anderson was writing about corruption and dishonesty in local government in Rotten Borough (1937), a fictional account based on Grantham, the home of Mrs Thatcher and her father, who was an alderman of the council around the time this novel was written.

Birmingham provides one of the best examples of civic purpose and renewal for which people are now searching. Through the leadership of Joseph Chamberlain, Birmingham was given a strong sense of civic direction. Chamberlain was elected as mayor between 1873 and 1876. His impact during this time was significant and was to have a long-lasting influence on local government:

During this time Chamberlain successfully widened the scope of local government from which there would be no withdrawal for over a century. The Town Council would be an instrument of collective purpose. Quite simply he set himself the task of governing Birmingham in the interests of the whole community; he was a radical elected on a populist ticket. (Cherry 1994, p. 77)

Chamberlain’s leadership resulted in many major areas of the city being re-developed, including Corporation Street, the Town Hall, and libraries. Some of these changes were in order to promote the increased health of the city but Chamberlain was also interested in the city’s economy and the happiness of its people.

How far were the changes which occurred in Birmingham and other major cities representative of a contemporary picture? Did they reflect a debate about central and local power? Did they provide a means of supporting a more urbanised society that was a necessary part of economic growth and may now be difficult to fully comprehend? What is clear is that for the period between 1880 and 1900, local government in England was confident. It made huge strides in improvement works and built a large number of new town halls (Cunningham 1981), schools, and libraries. Local authorities took over inner city country houses and turned them into public parks. They built drains, lit streets, and ran public transport on a scale unseen before. Yet, they did not do everything. They did not build as many houses as were expected (Young and Garside 1983). Poor relief was still seen to be a service run on early nineteenth-century principles of shame which were not to be removed until the post-1945 era. Councillors, mayors, and town clerks (Headrick 1962) were seen to be important civic leaders. Local government was benevolent and paternal.

Local authorities are the place of first resort in any community when individuals need information or are confronted with problems such as flooding. There is a general assumption that their role is to support local communities. The period between 1945 and 1974 saw this community support role being primarily delivered through homes, schools, roads, and in the provision of other social infrastructure. The period after 1974 required a different approach. The economic crisis meant that there was little funding to continue investment. The same trends were working on local economies as industrial restructuring began in earnest in a phase that did not finish until the early 1990s. Local authorities were on the front line, but they required very different skills. The large departments of architects and engineers were no longer needed and new roles in regeneration and community capacity building were required. This transition period extended over time with some local authorities taking longer to adjust than others. There was an initial period of shock that formerly wealthy industrial cities such as Birmingham and Manchester could suffer the same kind of decline as others with more traditional industries.

This change also meant an adjustment in style for central government. The large building programme in the post-war era had provided a direct link between local and central government through capital expenditure and funding programmes. The relationships were clear and rewards for delivery were high with more funding at the local level. Post-1974, the skills required at the local level were softer and required a much greater degree of coordination. The larger metropolitan authorities took a strategic approach to these issues, and the newly created district councils developed a new agenda which had a more practical, localised approach. Many larger councils adopted ‘neighbourhoodisation’ in the early 1980s to respond to the needs of their communities through management and delivery of services at the local level. For central government, the response eventually turned to another major initiative – the implementation of competition and encouragement of local authorities to be more efficient in their operations.

Central government was also going through changes with the creation of Next Steps Agencies and Non-departmental Public Bodies in an effort to respond to the impact of competition on its responsibilities. Major utilities were sold off. These pressures for change, deriving in part from the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to open up public services to the private sector were similar to those for competition in local government.

When central government wanted to respond with action at the local level, both Mrs Thatcher’s anti-local government views and the centre’s dislike of ‘fragmented’ local government led to the generation of specific organisations to undertake local programmes – task forces, Urban Development Corporations, and quangos (Lawless 1989). By the mid-1990s, local authorities lacked confidence and many years of low investment. Concentration on urban regeneration activities had distracted some from the emergence of specific social and community issues. Standards of attainment in schools were not keeping pace with other parts of the world. Hospital care was also seen to be in a lower division than other European countries and investment in public transport had reduced to a minimal level. At local level funding for roads, maintenance was often redirected to deal with leaking school roofs. England had also become multicultural in this 20-year period in a way which was almost unnoticed. These issues created a major agenda to be dealt with in 1997, although at the time it was uncertain whether either local or central government appreciated the scale of this task.

The debate on central–local relations

The importance of the role of ‘local’ government has been examined frequently. Many theorists take a critical view of centralism and focus on local government as a counterweight or alternative to the growing power of central government. As Pickvance and Preteceille (1991b) state, local government can only be seen or understood within the state as a whole. Restructuring local government cannot be undertaken without changing the nature of the total state. Devolution has the same effect. Much of the literature about local government that is used as the touchstone for understanding and analysis was generated during the anti-local government period 1979–1997. Even after 1997, the critical emphasis is on the domination of local government by external management styles, and competition is viewed as an assault on the public sector ethic. Post 1997 refocusing has attracted little attention. Local government is not dominated by a sense of privatisation. Rather, since 1997, local government has been dominated by an overwhelming focus on targets and performance which have been increasingly and more successfully focused towards citizen outcomes including improved health, increased educational qualifications, and better housing management. Indeed, to read that a focus on outcome is not as beneficial as a concentration on process (Kakabadse et al. 2003) can now read like a plea for professional or producer dominance over people-based outcomes.

The context of local government reform

The programme for the ‘modernisation’ of local government in England began in 1997 when the Labour government took power. The incoming government had a full change agenda for local government, which was based both on concerns and its potential as the direct deliverer of 80% of all public services. Under previous Conservative administrations, local government had been increasingly directed from central government with ever-larger proportions of their budgets ‘passported’ by central departments, directed towards the achievement of specific targets notably in social services and education. This inevitably produced a tight financial squeeze on other public services, such as roads, parks, planning, and environmental protection, which were frequently now bracketed together as the ‘liveability’ agenda. The public also increasingly expressed concerns that local authorities were not responsive to local people and that they had a culture that was not adequately focused on performance related to their needs.

The 1997 Labour government was concerned about democratic engagement with lower turnout rates in elections and particularly low involvement in the democratic process by young people. Additionally there were growing fears about the potential for council corruption which was confirmed through the ‘Donnygate’ case, where in Doncaster leading elected council members were convicted for accepting bribes and favours in return for planning consents. Finally from the councils’ perspective, increasing efforts to privatise or outsource council services were seen as an anathema to the public service tradition.

In 1997, this wide reform agenda for English local government was pulled together as a programme to modernise local government and, as the local government minister commented in 2004, this has been a 10-year project of radical change, not incremental tinkering (Mulholland 2004). The incoming government quickly published a series of white papers and other consultation reports, which were soon followed by the Local Government Act 1999 and the Local Government Act 2000. These acts, which covered different elements of the modernisation agenda, were directed to

1. ensure that councils’ political decision-making processes are efficient, transparent, and accountable;
2. continuously improve the efficiency and quality of the services for which they are responsible;
3. actively involve and engage the community in local decisions;
4. have the powers they need to work with other bodies to ensure that resources are deployed effectively to improve the well-being of their areas.

The main themes of the post-1997 period, then, were set and emerged in a variety of ways through legislation, specific initiatives, and funding. Issues such as performance and competition were included in best value, and after 2004, through the efficiency agenda. Other elements of the modernisation agenda were included in the Local Government Act 2000 which primarily dealt with the implementation of new council constitutions; the duty to promote economic, social, and environmental well-being; and the preparation of a Community Strategy. Other major components included proposals to establish Local Strategic Partnerships (LSP) (DTLR 2001c), e-government (ODPM 2003g), and Local Public Service Agreements (LPSAs) (ODPM/LGA 2003), all of which have been implemented without legislative underpinning.

These modernising reforms have worked their way through local government. Further white papers on local government were published: ‘Strong Local leadership – Quality Public Services’ in December 2001 and ‘Strong and Prosperous Communities’ in October 2006. The first concentrated primarily on the delivery agenda – performance, leadership, finance, e-government, LPSAs, and working together with central government around the citizen. It also made some commitments to reduce the total plan requirements which central government makes of local government. It stated that local authorities produced some 66 plans at the government’s behest. Some authorities had longer lists than this – perhaps double the number when strategies, statements, and other regular submissions of this kind were included. Almost none of these is joined up across issue, geography, or departments. There was a commitment to halve them. Further, those councils which were seen to perform well were promised further freedoms.

The latest round of local government reform builds on this earlier establishment of joined-up working with public agencies and proposes that there should a duty of public bodies to cooperate. Local authorities are seen to have a new role of place-shaping proposed by Lyons in 2006 and endorsed in the subsequent Local Government White Paper (2006) that involves bringing together all the public services in their areas. It also identifies the role of city regions in the future economic growth of the country and how these might be set up using Multi-Area Agreements (MAAs). It also contains a more localised approach to a performance framework that joins up more with other public agencies at the local level. Finally it proposes parishing for the whole country including urban areas and the potential devolution of services to this level.

How do they do it elsewhere?

Elsewhere in the world, local government has more legal autonomy (Hewison 2001) and certainly feels less pressurised by central government. Many local authorities have more freedom to act and more ability to raise funding, from taxation or other means. Local government in Great Britain is still seen as part of the national machinery of government. Its elections are seen to be a judgement on the state of national politics. Yet, the local level is one of the main interests in post-1991 Europe. Osterland (1994) argues that as the local level is the one which most affects people, and is the most important in...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Great expectations – the position in 1997
• 3 New approaches to decision making in local authorities
• 4 Promoting well-being and the community’s interest
• 5 Performance and freedoms
• 6 Delivery with partners – procurement, privatisation, partnerships, trading, and choice
• 7 Joining-up around customers – the role of e-government
• 8 Councillors, Standards, and Corruption
• 9 The future of local government finance
• 10 New localism
• 11 Local Strategic Partnerships – the way forward
• 12 Parishes, Town Councils, and Neighbourhood Working
• 13 Regions, sub-regions, and London
• 14 What is the future of local government?
• Bibliography
• Index