On reorganising local government: why should we care?
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And so here we are again, back to a place I inhabited for three years of my life between 2007 and 2010. Local Government reorganisation. Not the most popular of conversations over the dining table or bar, I suspect, but important nonetheless. The reorganisation of municipal England is expected to form part of the forthcoming devolution White Paper. It appears as though this will be underpinned by assumptions of unitary local government1, where those parts of England currently still operating under the two tiers of county and district councils would be reviewed and reorganised into single tiers.
I think this is an overdue conversation. My preference would be to remodel the whole map of English local government not just some areas, otherwise we are again in the preserve of incremental and inconsistent approaches that render different levels of political accountability in different areas. But that’s me jumping straight into the weeds of the issue; for now, let me address the headline question: why should we care?
Why should we care?
This issue gets to heart of some fundamental societal and political issues: to what extent do we value local democracy, want to empower local communities, invest in the future of our people and places, address local issues and provide essential services to those who need them? The answers that you arrive at will be informed by a mix of values, ideology and experience.
Local places and communities are where our lives intertwine with the lives of others and enmesh with our local geography, climate and environment. The interplay of these factors generate local culture and the reasons we live there. It’s where the strengths of communities can be celebrated and needs addressed. It’s where the future can not only be imagined but actively shaped. It’s also where the policy rubber hits the road: responding to and implementing the demands of national government alongside identifying and meeting the needs of these localities. And Local Government, at its best, is the conductor of this orchestra.
I’ve written before about the complexities of our current structures of political engagement and accountability; to all intents and purposes a visitor from another country might think they have been deliberately designed to obfuscate accountability and marginalise community voice – that is, if they could be persuaded there was any planning behind our current structures at all. Each merger or restructure or additional regional tier or abolition of a council has incrementally led us to a smorgasbord of political and administrative arrangements. They are hard enough to navigate when you work within them, let alone for the general public to figure out. Is it any wonder that turn out at local elections is so low?
It is long past time that we implemented and operated a coherent system of local government. One that is no longer on its last legs as a result of a brutal policy of austerity and rising demand, but one that is set up to thrive. Is it not too much to ask that, in 21st Century England, we can move home without having to learn a completely new language and structure of local government to engage with? I don’t have high hopes for a new round of reorganisation, primarily because I fear a continuation of the incremental approach to change and that the rationale for change will be primarily economic. But this doesn’t have to be the purpose of a restructure. If this is the case, why is an incremental approach insufficient to create structures that are fit for purpose and why do we need to consider a broader range of factors in such a process? And can the final proposals for change be designed and implemented through a coherent, transparent, engaging and accountable process that is far more than simply redrawing administrative lines on a map, or will they be largely imposed from the centre, a national mandate under the illusion of local decision-making?
These are critical questions I will unpack below.
Questions of purpose.
I believe that at their best, local authorities are custodians of places, anchor institutions of the areas they administer. They can take a long-term view as champion for and shaper of the places that fall within their boundaries; they offer local solutions to local problems; they co-ordinate the best of local public services in response to need; they are a champion for a vibrant third sector that often fills the gaps between statutory services and adds significantly to the richness of local life; and they broker difficult decisions through the mobilisation of consent. All of this is grounded in local accountability to the very populations they serve.
A strong, local, democratically-accountable foundation is, therefore, an essential part of a healthy society. And for that to be the case, it is critical that we get the structures right. Structures can enable or constrain; liberate or imprison. To get them right there are two considerations of purpose: first, the purpose of Local government itself. If we apply the idiom of form following function, let’s get clear on function first. Then we must dive a bit deeper into considering the purpose of the restructure itself. This is the oft-ignored piece, as without surfacing these drivers of change, we can all be following the same process but our different assumptions over what is most important will lead to an unnecessarily fractious process. In this article I will look at these two aspects of process.
…of local government.
Even after almost 200 years2 of local government, questions of purpose are not straightforward ones to answer. Is local government there to represent its citizens, lead the development of local places, implement national policy, nurture communities, tackle local issues, support the most vulnerable, attract investment and growth, join up local public services, manage the environment, represent local interests at regional and national levels, mobilise consent for critical decisions, be a custodian of place in the long-term…
The answer is probably a bit of everything, and this that makes restructuring a tricky proposition. Different people will place different degrees of emphasis on these aspects of purpose and, to compound the issue, it is too easy to jump straight into the how. Yet we need to answer the question of purpose before we can figure out how best to meet that purpose.
To help with this, it important to consider legacy: how did we get here3? The last, national, wide-ranging reorganisation of local government was a result of the Redcliffe-Maud commission4 in the late 1960s / early 1970s, which led to the establishment of two tier local government, albeit not on a geography recommended by the review. Having worked in a two tier area I felt the frustrations of what was increasingly a blurred line of responsibility and accountability. Yet reading the papers from that time, and seeing the structures that it was designed to replace in large rural parts of the country, I realised – begrudgingly perhaps – that it kinda made sense. I just think the lines have become obfuscated with time and the slow accretion of new functions and responsibilities at each tier, while the wider waters have been muddied by the introduction of sub-regional and regional tiers of government, as well as multiple forms of governance.
If we haven’t clearly defined the purpose of local government we will end up with a Frankenstein monster of a structure. This probably warrants a longer-term exercise looking at critical trends and stretching our thinking towards 2100. Two-tier local government has been around for over 50 years, so let’s ensure that the solutions we come up with stand a reasonable chance of being fit for purpose for the next 50. The extent to which we can we future-proof our decisions is critical.
…of the restructure.
It follows that we must also be clear about the purpose of the restructure itself. It is almost too obvious to state, but the purpose of reorganisation must be to deliver a structure that enables local government to achieve its purpose, so far as is practicable. But that isn’t the only thing that the review will seek to achieve. We must surface the hidden assumptions in order to take account of context and help us navigate the tensions that will emerge along the way, as not all aims are mutually compatible.
What are those aims? Are we trying to generate financial savings or make it easier to invest in localities? Improve or reduce local democratic accountability? Devolve functions and powers or draw more up to Westminster? Drive accountability to local people or make it easier for government departments to hold local authorities to account? Gain operating efficiencies or make it easier for the private/third sector to access public contracts? Increase or decrease local political influence on national party politics? Improve services for local people or marginalise local authorities from service provision? And so the list goes on.
If the purpose is to save money, we’ll assume biggest is best (even though we know it’s not) and go for county-wide structures. If we assume local communities are most important and we should seek to optimise for quality of service and engagement, we will go smaller. If we believe local economies are most important, we might look to create local authorities that can be custodians of places that make sense to the way local economies work and the ways people live their lives. If we want every local authority to serve a similar population, we will end up with one form of standardisation and some strange lines on maps.
Whether you see these as positive or negative depends on your values and philosophy. My assumption here is that any reorganisation will be driven by the need to reduce costs and find ways to avoid the spectre of local authorities declaring themselves effectively bankrupt, as so many are close to doing. There is a danger his process runs the risk of being a missed opportunity, for doing something simply to save money is not a particularly compelling or visionary picture of the future; it would be a continuation of the austerity logic that has decimated local services and deprived communities of vital resources.
Without compelling answers as to the purpose of local government and the purpose of the reorganisation, and without active efforts to align the two, we will end up with a structural answer in search of a solution. The process will be all about the structure and not about what that structure is designed to enable, thus seeding the very elements of its destruction in its design. That approach doesn’t tend to end well. So let’s turn next to questions of process.
Questions of process.
With no compelling vision for local government or motivating reason for change we will be left to curate a purely technocratic exercise of drawing arbitrary lines on a map. It is only having considered the purpose of local government in the 21st Century, and the purpose of any reorganisation of its structures, and sought to align the two, that we are ready to consider how we might proceed in practice.
Because we are early in the current Labour administration we have the luxury of being able to take some time to get the process right and still enact and embed any changes within this parliamentary term. We may be more likely to have a smoother period of transition if we surface and discuss relevant issues in order to reach a broad consensus around the best way forward. It’s important to spend time up front engaging the public, politicians, policymakers and wider stakeholders to unpack both the purpose of local government and how these can be realised through a restructure. Perhaps a national commission or enquiry is the way forward. Alongside this could be a national citizens assembly, convened to review and offer the views of a cross-section of society on the insights, ideas and ultimate proposals. The views of young people should also inform this process, for they will be inheriting its results, even if more young people than ever seem to be questioning the value of democracy4b.
A critical adjunct is to consider: who gets to decide on the final structures? Any implementation will need to be on the back of legislation, but who ultimately signs off on the option that forms that legislation? In the 2000s it was the Boundary Committee that prepared the recommendations, the very ones it was my job at the time to influence. A similar body, convened for the purpose, may be a way forward, with an appropriate blend of expertise experience and perspectives. But a body that represents to Government the preferred way forwards, with sufficient powers to do so, in order that it does not simply act as a filter to the wishes of government.
Whatever happens, it is imperative that the solutions are not left up to local councils to figure out. I say that with respect. The process in the 2000s was famously botched5 for a number of reasons. Perhaps the assumption was that councils would come together to make proposals for change, but the reality was that as they were invited to apply for unitary status without considering the implications for their neighbours, thus triggering – at best – local competition, usually unwanted by those other councils dragged into the game as collateral damage. At worst it led to all-out hostilities between every tier of government: parish, district, county, national, some of which ended up in the High Court.
There were no winners. How can there be, when you are pitching a county council and its districts, all of whom bring a long history of ups and downs, successes and failings, rivalries and conflict, into a policy arena and inviting them to fight for their survival. The legacy of these battles loomed as a large shadow over so much that followed. It is also what has led, in large part, to the fragmented structures we have today. We have to move beyond that paradigm and embrace a more collaborative approach.
Foundational challenges.
The question follows: what are some of the foundational challenges that arise when you do embark on such a process? I summarise some below, not to illustrate the complexity of the task (although it does do that), rather because within each challenge is a potential opportunity.
Governance. It follows that if we can simplify structures, relationships become clearer. Increased transparency, accountability and engagement follow. Enabling good governance is vital, applying those tenets set out in the Nolan principles of public life that seem to have fallen by the political and social wayside over the last decade or more. It also follows that simplified structures and better governance leads to more efficient functioning in service of the defined purpose.
Productivity. The NHS teaches us that when you are constantly lurching between new structures all the organisational effort gets absorbed in to two core areas. First is the overt nuts and bolts of reorganisation, making sure people, processes, systems, decision-making and governance are all as aligned as they can be, often with new organisations being constituted from the ashes of the old ones. Have we dissembled and reassembled all the parts in the new configuration in such a way as it will actually function as we hope it will? While behind the scenes the covert operation for many is, of course, the jockeying for position and power that goes on between senior staff and the loss of productivity among those who might at best feel deeply unsettled by the changes, and at worst fear for their own job in the restructure.
Standardisation. The centrifugal force that is Westminster does not let go of control easily, preferring instead to hoard rather than devolve. Sam Friedman6 offers three core reasons why this is: a belief in central government that local government is boring to voters, that the centre hates giving up control, and that there is a deep cultural antipathy to the idea of local differences in service or taxation (the so-called ‘postcode lottery’). In turn I think this latter point leads to an almost pathological desire for standardisation and scale, as a proxy for value for money, but this runs counter to the notion of local solutions to local problems. To Sam’s list I would add one of my own: infantilisation. In my experience, local government is generally looked down upon by those in Westminster, rarely considered to be the adult in the room by those who think they are.
Systems. The societal challenges we face are increasingly intersectional and complex, so a standardised service does not flex to meet the often complex needs of an individual. Problems don’t equal services or departments, they transcend them. As a result, we are increasingly required to join up responses across the public sector, co-ordinating with a range of agencies to address issues from obesity to community safety to worklessness. It’s when people fall between the gaps – because there is no neat match between their problem and a service – that we see acute ‘service’ failure. But in effect it’s a failure of the wider state. So how might we design structures that can help mitigate the likelihood of these failures from occurring?
Subsidiarity. It’s important to embed the principle that decisions should be taken at the closest level to those they impact. The opportunity is to find ways of engaging local people and communities in these decisions. In the 2000s this led to many county-level proposals for unitary local government including a number of sub-county Community Fora. The cynic might ask how this new bureaucracy was different from the existing one, with a similar number of Districts instead. Whatever it looks like on paper, it is inconceivable that subsidiarity wouldn’t result in some functions being transferred from central government to local government, and from local government to – where they exist – parish councils.
This leads to the next set of considerations: to what extent we should account for the natural, social, political and economic geography of England? I’ll unpack this, and what it means for the lines we might ultimately end up drawing on the map, next.
Questions of geography.
“Before considering what the Local Government areas actually are, we must ask what principles might reasonably be expected to underlie the geographical arrangement7.”
When all is said and done this process will ultimately deliver new lines on maps, demarcating a new administrative geography. It’s fair to note that, as a country, we don’t have a great track record of civil servants from Westminster drawing lines on maps to determine the fate of communities [Empire pod; articles]. While that might sound a little over-dramatic, it’s one that bears pause. For, at its heart, what is this exercise if it is not ultimately about where to draw lines on maps. Draw them in the right place and those lines can connect; draw them in the wrong place and they can divide. Draw them too tightly around a city (ostensibly for political reasons) as with, say, Norwich or Hull, and the tax raising powers and ability to grow are significantly constrained. The success, the vibrancy of a city, is no longer in its own hands – it requires collaboration with those living in, and administering, the leafier suburbs.
Draw them in places that doesn’t account for the future and we end up with oddities, such as how the growing Cambridgeshire town of Wisbech8 is in two counties and two districts. If coherent governance and growth is a priority, this is a problem. If we want similarly sized structures based on historical ceremonial (county) boundaries, you might think that this is a necessary casualty.
These lines can be determined by many things. Geographical features might divide certain communities or bring others together. They might make service delivery tricky (read: more expensive) if, like rivers or hills, they offer natural barriers to movement, or we end up with refuse collections from two different councils going down the same street on different days. Infrastructure is often a guide to geography; it can indicate where people travel or the terrain is impassable or where industry is located. These are all factors to consider. In the 2000s we did a lot of work on functional travel to work areas, seeking to offer an option for restructure in Norfolk that made sense in terms of how people go about their daily lives and how local economies were geographically structured. That is still a logic I think carries weight.
We also have to factor in sparsity, the inconvenient fact that makes service delivery expensive and more straightforward solutions complicated. It would take ten Norfolks to get close to the population of Greater London while at the same time it could swallow almost three-and-a-half Greater Londons within its border. People in the west of the Norfolk might feel affiliated with Norwich for football yet look to Cambridge for shopping. Many live closer to London or Leicester than the county’s second town of Great Yarmouth.
Community therefore follows from geography – they are naturally intertwined. The invisible lines separating communities are often only known by those who live there. Lines between rival towns, or schools, or communities that support one football team and not the other. Communities with shared or diverse culture and history. Traditions and practices. Successes and tragedies. Where industry has once flourished and then collapsed, or where the economy keeps on ticking over. Stories of the pit closures in Fife in the 1980s were retold to me8a by residents with a sense of pain that betrayed the passing of the last forty years. Cromer and Sheringham are neighbouring Norfolk seaside towns and they have that in common, but to understand what it is like to live there is to understand what brings them together and what divides them.
Place and identity.
Any consideration of local government needs to have answers to these questions of place. The issue of geography needs to make sense at multiple political levels, too, from the smallest units on up. In terms of political geography we need wards big enough that we don’t have hundreds of elected councillors in each Council, but not so big that the councillors are seen as remote from their communities. Councils that are big enough that they can operate effectively on behalf of their areas, but not so big that they become distant bureaucratic machines, built beyond their optimum operating efficiency. And regions that make sense to people because they offer a level of cohesion and co-ordination of those issues best addressed at a larger geography.
Furthermore, given the need for local trade-offs to be be made on critical issues through the mobilisation of consent, a priority remains local democratic representation. Do we not want wards which elect councillors at a scale that make sense for these communities? If we want to support sustainable economic growth, do we not want these wards to aggregate up to a scale that makes sense for the way people across these communities interact and interrelate? And do we not want this to be at a scale that is sufficient for each local authority to be able to function effectively, recruit quality staff, operate on a sound financial footing, and truly be a champion for the places that they govern?
These issues underpin considerations of subsidiarity: developing structures that allow for relevant issues to be addressed at the most appropriate level. Regions, for example, are the scale better suited to co-ordinating strategic issues (often infrastructure) such as the economy, housing and transportation. But what constitutes a region? City regions are one answer to this: Greater Manchester or Birmingham perhaps. Yet places like Devon or Norfolk are already de facto regions in their own right, given their geographical size, if not their population.
At the end9 of the day, does it really matter? Full disclosure: the geographer in me says yes, of course it does. Places matter. Counties matter. Districts matter. We grow up, go to school, marry in these places. Some remain in them for their lives. Others are more transient. Most simply want to find a sense of place to call their home and in which they can lead their version of a good life.
But I do think that what people can expect, wherever they live, is clear knowledge of how to engage with their community, that their votes matter, that they know who represents them, that there are mechanisms for making difficult decisions affecting their communities, that local needs are addressed and that they feel their local facilities and places matter. Next I’ll summarise my thoughts on how we might achieve this.
Questions of scale.
The critical challenge remains: who gets to draw the lines on a map? Give the task to a bureaucrat and you might get standardised lines, under assumptions of effectiveness. But is effectiveness sufficient? Give it to economists and you might get the fewest lines, under assumptions of efficiency. But is biggest best? Give it to politicians and you might get the most gerrymandered lines under assumptions of political advantage. But are ‘safe seats’ empowering? Give it to geographers and you might get the most socio-economically appropriate lines under assumptions of community. But is engagement enough? Give to local authority officers and you might get a technocratic solution that is an incremental step forward from where we are now. But is an evolutionary approach sufficient for the middle of the 21st Century?
I always saw local authorities as custodians of place. Connectors who join up these different communities. Shaping their future, engaging people, innovating with new ideas while respecting the past. Creators of a viable future and custodians of a shared past. At a scale that promotes efficiency of operation and enables collaboration with the wider public sector. Covering areas that people identify with and responsible for functions people care about. Turnout is conditional on people feeling there is a strong reason to turn out. Electing people to represent them on issues that matter with powers that make a difference and at a scale that offers transparency and accountability.
Can we arrive at a solution that offers a blend of effective and efficient operation, within and between the new organisations and their partners, based on clear purpose; that offers a blend of empowerment and engagement with citizens, communities, and the wider social sector, based on being a clear champion of place; and one founded not on an incremental but rather a revolutionary approach to change?
At best, this exercise could be the start of a renewal of local public service and democratic accountability, liberating a new era of civic entrepreneurialism. At worst, this whole exercise in reorganisation could be a catastrophic distraction, nothing more than a rearrangement of bureaucratic deckchairs on the Titanic, doomed to sink under the impact of severe austerity.
I’ve previously titled a blog10 about failures of Government procurement and commissioning “the biggest issue you never knew you cared about”. The fiasco – and this word doesn’t come close to doing it justice – of privatising parts of the probation service illustrates what can happen when policy is ill-thought through, the advice of experts and practitioners is ignored, incentive mechanisms such as payment by results are misused, profits are privatised and risks socialised, and policy is pursued on grounds purely of ideology.
My deep worry with the reorganisation of local government is that it follows a similar path, whether based on a set of assumptions or narrow ambitions. The ultimate path taken will depend on the extent to which we consider the purpose of local government, the purpose of reorganisation, the process to be followed and the importance community and geography.
The form and function of local government is too important an issue not to get right. It goes to the heart of what we value most as a society. About how we collectively respond to the opportunities and challenges of the present while taking a long-term view for future generations, make decisions requiring material trade-offs through the mobilisation of consent, about how we hold to account those who don’t serve our needs and engage with those who do.
Perhaps I need to rename my commissioning blog; the reorganisation of Local Government is by far the biggest issue you never knew you cared about.
References.
1 https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/unitary-local-government-an-explainer/
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_Corporations_Act_1835
4 https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/long-shadows-50-years-of-the-local-government-act-1972/
4b Faith in democracy: millennials are the most disillusioned generation ‘in living memory’ https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/youthanddemocracy
6 Friedman, S (2024) Failed State: Why nothing works and how we fix it. Kindle Edition.
7 Maud, J and Finer, S.E. (1953) “Local Government of England and Wales” Oxford University Press (p31).
8 Interestingly the Redcliffe-Maud proposals would have negated this issue as it proposed a new ‘’Peterborough and North Fens” authority – https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/long-shadows-50-years-of-the-local-government-act-1972/
8a Download report here: https://ianburbidge.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/basic-income-scotland.pdf
9 and around 4,000 words later…
10 On the biggest issue you never know you cared about (https://ianburbidge.com/2018/10/31/on-the-biggest-issue-you-never-knew-you-cared-about/)
Ian Burbidge. 