Member News
By Tom Shakespeare - 16th April 2010
Our political system is in need of large-scale systemic reform. For decades, successive governments have pursued an approach to policymaking which has centralised power and decision-making to the detriment of local people, communities, local government and public services. This has eventually led to a climactic breakdown of trust between the governors and the governed, and equally importantly to a decline in personal and social responsibility.
There are numerous symptoms of this failure too. The growth of regional and personal inequality; the fall in public sector productivity despite increased investment; the growth in crime; the number of economically inactive people. These can all be attributed to an ineffective state, unable to understand the needs of its citizens, let alone respond to them.
But behind the headline figures lie a number of fundamental problems. For example, the current government creates policy initiatives which pay little attention to unintended consequences – creating targets which actually have the opposite effect to that intended.
And there is the inability to even contemplate innovative variability in the provision of public services – meaning that millions of people miss out on services which would deliver better results for less money.
And furthermore, there is the lack of trust of public sector workers – with the tick-box and target culture preventing frontline staff from taking personal responsibility and accountability for their actions.
However, we must be clear. This isn’t just a problem with the current government: it has been the trajectory of UK political discourse since the end of the Second World War. The arguments around the need to devolve power are well rehearsed. But how often has rhetoric been turned into reality in the past?
Thus the key challenges facing local government in the future will be the same whoever wins the general election: to create policies that lead towards a more effective state. This will require turning the existing political discourse on its head, with every policy scrutinised for unintended consequences and driven by demand rather than by structures and systems, whilst also ensuring that there is sufficient room for experimentation and innovation.
What are the most important local government policy tensions that need to be resolved in order to achieve this? Three stand out.
Firstly, the financial settlement between central and local government needs to be revisited. The Conservative policies to incentivise growth in business and housebuilding, as well as policies to reduce ring-fencing, go some way towards this. But systemic reform requires full local control of finances to run services in the most appropriate way locally.
Secondly, a removal of the central target regime which pervades local government is needed to allow room for innovation and drive up performance. The central regime should be replaced by locally determined measures of performance, as well as local initiatives to increase involvement and interest amongst local residents in the provision of local public services. This includes ideas such as community co-operatives and mutual societies.
Finally, local government must itself move into a wider scale commissioning role, taking strategic oversight over the entirety of local public services, whilst having less direct control of services.
There are a number of challenges to overcome in order to achieve this, not least the political ideologues who see the difference between the state and private companies as the principal dividing line between the left and right. They must move aside and allow more innovative delivery models to thrive. However, it also requires the public sector to work together more closely – something which will, again, have significant practical and cultural challenges.
There are opportunities with initiatives such as Total Place to begin to move the public sector in this direction, but the potential for something long-lasting is an enormous challenge.
One thing we can be sure about is that whichever party wins the general election, there will have to be moves to address the substantive problems which face the country. Whether it is the ‘smart state’, the ‘big society’, ‘fair society’ or just plain devolution, all of the current rhetoric must be translated into reality if it is going to have a long-lasting impact on the economy, public services and society. This will require political bravery, coherent policy formation and a political vision. Whether any party can offer this after the election is yet to be seen.
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