A complaint I often hear from councils when faced with talk of the Big Society and localism is: “We’ve been doing this for years.” And of course they’re right: there is little in the coalition government’s agenda that is entirely novel. What is new is the scale of change required. This isn’t just a few interesting partnerships with the voluntary sector or a neighbourhood planning pilot – it’s a system shift.
Even without the current, intense financial pressures, councils have to change how they operate. As one council chief executive recently put it, the problem is not fundamentally the cuts, but rising demand. Our ageing population is remorselessly pushing up the cost of public services for the next generation. Combine this with widespread cynicism about public institutions and a broken economic model, and you have an irresistible case for reimagining the role of local government.
Councils are responding with a wave of innovations. In the short term, the focus is clearly on cutting costs, with shared services, flatter management structures and centralised policy and customer service functions. But in the next year or so, most councils will start moving towards some sort of commissioning model. They are planning to review their services, often involving citizens in co-designing new offerings, as you will see from the examples in the following pages. There are some radical options on the table.
How about offering citizens a council tax rebate if they clean their own streets? Or giving neighbourhoods control of their own share of the local government budget, so they can spend it however they choose? Despite recent setbacks with some high-profile attempts at radical restructures (think of Suffolk’s unpopular New Strategic Direction policy of outsourcing almost all of its services, which met with almost universal opprobrium), the need, momentum and desire to think beyond traditional council models is still very much alive. Councils like Lambeth, Barnet and Brighton are forging ahead with high-profile new models, and many others are quietly doing work that is equally radical.
Earlier this year, the New Local Government Network (NLGN) highlighted some of the trends likely to define the next few years of local government development. We predicted a shift from wholesale delivery of public services to a retail model as councils move down the path of giving citizens far more choice through personalised budgets in social care. Councils will probably have to focus less on hierarchical, top-down ‘place shaping’ (eg shaping localities to achieve the best for citizens) and more on community development – encouraging people to make their own decisions about planning and delivery of essential services.
Councils will also have to make another, less high-profile shift in their politics. Traditional political roles, especially for backbench scrutineers, will have to change in a world of direct democracy and commissioning. If we don’t see a new generation of democratic experimentation, the only thing we can expect is further public disengagement. The cuts are tough, but the opportunity to shape a new generation of institutions and services means local government remains one of the most exciting parts of the public sector to be working in. I’m looking forward to seeing what we can achieve over the coming years.
