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SubscribeLocal government does not feel listened to by central government. Taking more successful models from other European countries as a guide, Dr Greg Stride, senior researcher at the Local Government Information Unit (LGiU), asks whether – and how – this can change, in this instalment of our Municipal Missions Manifesto series.
How bad is the relationship between central and local government? Based on evidence from our survey of senior council figures earlier this year, very bad.
We asked leaders, chief executives, cabinet members for finance and section 151 officers from across England representing councils of every political persuasion whether they were happy with the government’s performance in considering local government in wider policy decisions, and only 8% said they were. This is critical, given how crucial local government is for delivering central government priorities. It gets worse.
Eight per cent was the highest level of satisfaction we measured. Only 6% were happy with the central government’s understanding of the scale of the problem facing local authorities. That number fell to 4% when asked about the transparency of central government’s decisions on council finances. On providing clarity for councils planning their finances, only 3.5% thought the government was doing okay. And, worst of all, when it comes to delivering a sustainable funding system only 1.4% were satisfied.
The number I want to focus on here is the 8% who said they were happy with the central government’s consideration of local government in wider policy decisions. Because others in this series have already expertly outlined the problems in local government finance and service delivery, I want to answer a more fundamental question: how is it possible for local government to feel this ignored?
England is a remarkably centralised country in international terms. Financially, central government holds nearly all the cards – local government is reliant on central government grants based on formulae that bear little relationship to need and councils have very few levers they can pull to raise revenue.
Councils are beholden to central government priorities, where legislation often changes in ways that affect local government without any serious thought as to how local government will cope: think home-to-school transport or recycling. Maybe most remarkably in international terms, by virtue of England’s near-unique uncodified constitution, local governments have no constitutional protection.
All of this is to say that central government ignores local government because they can. This is not true elsewhere. In other countries, local governments can make their voices heard.
In Italy, for example, there is a whole series of institutions that bring local and central governments together. The central government consults local and regional authorities via the State-Cities and Local Autonomies Conference. The conference exists to bring together relevant groups with respect to local matters, and it does so in a way that is difficult to imagine happening here, translated from their website (with the help of Google):
“The State – City and Local Autonomies Conference is chaired by the President of the Council of Ministers or, by his delegation, by the Minister of the interior or by the Minister for regional affairs and autonomies, in the matters of respective competence…
“It also includes the Ministers of economy and finance, infrastructure and transport, health, the Presidents of the associations representing local authorities, as well as the Mayors and Provincial Presidents designated by the respective associations.”
A guaranteed place at the table beside ministers could only help to bring local government into the heart of decision-making.
In Germany, the various local associations (roughly the equivalent of the LGA) have the right to present their positions in any situation where a decision or change to legislation would have a substantial effect on them. This means, again, that they have to be at least listened to. When do legislators in England have to listen to local government?
Or at another level, the German federal states, the Länder, are represented in the Bundesrat, one of the two houses of the legislature. Is it too much to imagine that the House of Lords might one day be replaced with a system of representation for local areas? We’ve even seen a few similar ideas pop up in the party manifestos.
Imagine a world where a new local government finance settlement has to be debated in an open chamber with the leaders of every council. It seems some way off, but in many countries this type of guaranteed representation of local voices is the norm, and from our international research, there is every reason to believe that their systems of local government, particularly when it comes to finance, are working much better than ours.
There might even be opportunities for new innovations. Maybe we could implement a system where MPs have to attend council meetings. The details would need to be hammered out, but it couldn’t hurt to have MPs communicating more with elected councillors. When we are moving from a situation where almost nobody in local government feels listened to, the only way is up.
You don’t need a codified constitution to make sure local government can be heard. Institutions that exist in primary legislation, especially those with a democratic mandate, are much more robust than informal institutions. Introducing new fora, such as a standing conference, for meetings between ministers or national legislators and councils would complicate the relationships between central and local, but a complicated system is better than no system at all.
These changes would represent the crucial first steps towards parity of esteem, the situation we should always have been in, where local and central governments recognise one another as partners with equal democratic mandates aiming for the same goals: effective government, democratic representation, and better lives for our citizens.
These changes wouldn’t solve every problem local government has today – our LGIU@40 manifesto outlines more of what needs to be done – but you could do worse as a first step than simply ensuring that local government has to be considered.
The LGiU is an independent, not-for-profit membership organisation whose mission is to make local democracy around the world collectively stronger, through shared ideas, resources and connections for local government.
For more information on Municipal Missions Manifesto, read our introduction to the series here. All articles in the series are collected here.
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