Caroline Cunningham on the County Councils Network

Caroline Cunningham is director for the County Councils Network and leads on finance. She has been with the network, a part of the Local Government Association, since 2004 starting as deputy director and becoming director 18 months into her tenure. Before joining CCN she worked in research and policy in a number of councils and did a PhD in public sector policy making.

Room 151: What does the County Councils Network do?

Caroline Cunningham: The big difference between us and groups like the Society of County Treasurers and the Association of Chief Executives is we’re a member-led organisation. Technically we are a special interest group of the LGA and all of our members are members of the LGA but separately members of CCN.

We operate with representation from elected members across all of our member authorities, we have six meetings a year for membership and a CCN management committee which is cross-party. So we’re the member side whereas the Society of County Treasurers is a technical officer society and provides us with finance advice.

Membership is not quite what you would expect. It’s 36 authorities and 27 are two-tier county councils and the remaining nine are unitary authorities that are county-like: they’re large, strategic authorities and more rural. They tend not to have one big centre of population.

Room 151: What unique challenges and advantages do county councils face?

CC: As CNN we do a number of things, one of which is sharing best practice across our membership. One of the big issues is that a lot of policy is developed in a very London-centric, urban-centric fashion. That is simply the nature of the beast. A lot of what we do is to point out that those approaches are not going to work in the sort of settings that our member authorities represent, in the way that they would in Birmingham or Manchester, for example.

So we’re good at holding a mirror up and saying the whole world isn’t like Westminster and we need the freedom and authority to do it slightly differently.

Room 151: How does that impact on finance policy?

CC: To give a current example there is the issue of localisation of council tax benefit. Our authorities tend to have a higher proportion of older people – that cuts across a number of policy areas. If you have a method of allocating funding that doesn’t recognise that, our member authorities would be disadvantaged.

It’s the same with adult social care; funding doesn’t necessarily recognise a council’s demographic or geographic profile. Some services are more difficult to deliver in sparsely populated areas. If you are delivering home care in a tight urban setting you might be able to have one carer who covers a fairly small geographic area. In our members’ authorities a carer might spend much more time travelling between people who are spread out.

Room 151: Are Community Budgets a good solution to financial problems? 

CC: They are one of the things that have been around for a while under different names and at the moment are at the experimental stage. Two CCN member authorities, Chester and Essex, are running pilots. But they are very much in the early stages and it is something we are sharing the learning from.

But I think the jury is still out. In theory and principal it has to be better if you can corral all the resources in an area towards a common end. Whether that is actually practical and possible and whether it is the answer to everything is a much more difficult question.

It’s the sort of thing local government is pretty good at but there are complications like if one organisation contributes to a saving made by another how does that fit and how is the money reinvested? There are issues like that to consider. The practicalities and how it can be made to work are the areas that concern me.

Room 151: What are the most important financial issues faced by local authorities now?

CC: The big ones are the final implications of the current spending round and the reductions in spending, and of course whatever happens in the next spending round. Again, there hasn’t been much light shed on that yet but you may well assume that it’s not going to be rosy for anybody.

Then there are the longer term pressures, the big one for our members is the adult social care budget and the social care budget generally. At the moment there is just no funding solution in sight.

Room 151: Are members making the most out of opportunities like TIF and CIL?

CC: From our member authorities’ point of view the most important thing is the concern over stimulating growth in their local economies. That needs to be addressed and one of the issues we have is Government recognising the role of county councils in two-tier areas in particular. I think it is less of an issue for our unitary members because they have the whole range of services. But county councils play a role in economic development and growth: where does the support for that come from and what is the cost of it? You need infrastructure, roads, schools etc and those costs fall on county councils. At the moment a lot of the incentives for growth in two-tier areas fall to district councils. The New Homes Bonus is about incentivising house building and 80% of that resource goes to district councils and only 20% to county councils: it’s an interesting situation.

The same is true of the Community Infrastructure Levy which technically goes to district councils. In a two-tier area all of the local authorities need to agree where the need for infrastructure is. So it is more complicated in some of our areas than others.