Taking it from the top

July 12, 2006

Anna Randle, Head of Policy, NLGN
Westminster & Whitehall World

The Government is faced with two fundamental domestic challenges: addressing the political disengagement of citizens and reforming public services. These are hugely complex issues which cut across many of the separate issues dealt with by different departments, ministers and other cogs in the machinery, and they underpin much of the thinking and action this government is taking. They are not unrelated. Most of the rhetoric from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Home Office on neighbourhood governance and citizen empowerment is about giving citizens tools with which to take some control over their lives, communities and local areas. The aim is partly about building social capital and social mobility, and partly also about levers with which to make services more responsive to community needs and therefore help drive improvement.



However, central government is inherently limited in what it can do in terms of achieving this local connection, engagement and responsiveness. Sitting in Whitehall, ministers and policy makers can undertake the analysis, and come to conclusions about what needs to change on the ground. But in order to turn rhetoric into reality, government needs the partnership and co-operation of local institutions of governance and service delivery. There must be ears nearer to the ground to hear what communities are saying through new governance structures, and levers over delivery agencies at local level to ensure that voices are not just heard, but that services and outcomes respond accordingly.



Local government, as the institution located at this level, and which takes an overarching, strategic view of a locality rather than looking down the chute of a particular service silo, is therefore key to realising the twin ambitions of building a civic society and improving services. Although the Government has not yet fully fleshed out what the promised neighbourhood arrangements and powers might actually look like, it has realised that local government cannot and should not be by-passed, and indeed is crucial to getting this right.



However, as the Government develops its thinking about neighbourhood governance and agendas variously described as such as citizen empowerment, choice and voice, it should remember that up and down the country, councils have already been developing new ways of working at more local levels, and devolving within their own geographical boundaries. More than two thirds of councils have established local structures in the last 5 years. These range from Area Forums which are largely consultative, to Area Committees, with devolved budgets and decision making, to local-level partnerships involving other key agencies such as health and the police which exist below the level of the Local Strategic Partnership.



These new ways of working do not perhaps always go as far as the more radical versions of neighbourhood governance may envision. They tend to be more about citizen engagement than direct empowerment, for example. The services and budgets which have been devolved to more local levels may also be limited at this stage, though often they are the beginning of what is intended to be an incremental process.



Newly published NLGN research, Councils embracing localism: lessons in decentralisation has examined the local devolution of three very different councils – Birmingham, West Sussex and Wakefield. The report found that these developing local structures are already enabling huge developments in how councils engage with citizens, effect changes in services and spending to reflect local needs, and the way that all service delivery agencies within the locality can be involved in localised decision-making.



Why are councils moving on this agenda? Partly because they see the way that government thinking is moving. Partly in response to more opaque parts of the Local Government Act 2000, which suggested area working to balance out the new political management arrangements. But mainly because councils genuinely recognise local engagement to be a way of helping them respond to community needs and deliver on local priorities. Often called the Community Leadership role of local government, councils can look across a locality, engage with the many communities within it, and exert influence over other agencies, thus enabling the delivery of responsive and joined up services. A ‘one size fits all’ approach will not fit across one locality any more than it will across a whole country, and engaging and devolving to local levels ensures this responsive variability.



Two of the councils studied in the NLGN research – Birmingham and Wakefield – had put local decentralisation at the heart of their improvement strategies as councils. Birmingham’s ‘Going Local’ scheme, the most radical decentralisation being undertaken by any council in the country at the moment, was born of the conclusion that in a city of over one milllion people, centrally organised services could not possibly meet the needs of many diverse communities and areas. In Wakefield, a unitary authority comprised of several smaller urban centres and a surrounding rural area, the council realised that the only way to re-engage with citizens, rebuild trust and make services respond to needs on the doorstep was to engage at a very local level, and involve all local partners in order to tackle cross-cutting issues such as the environment and anti-social behaviour.



The third council, West Sussex, was already an ‘excellent’ council as measured by the Audit Commission, yet also felt that engagement and decision-making was needed at far more local levels, also in partnership with other agencies and tiers of local government such as the parishes and districts.



NLGN’s research suggests that the Government is right to believe that decentralisation to local levels is a powerful way of engaging citizens and improving and joining-up public services at the level of the citizen. The emerging neighbourhood governance agenda will push local government further and harder, and will be a significant challenge. But there are many lessons that can be learned from current experiments in area decentralisation, and councils have already shown that they recognise the huge value in doing so.



However, there should also be a word of warning to central government in this agenda. Devolution and empowerment do not – cannot – start with the Town Hall and move down from there. Citizens will not re-engage with institutions of governance and public services unless the new levers they are offered are actually attached to a body which can really respond. If councils and their partners are overly shackled by centrally-driven targets, funding regimes, inspection and other limits, then neighbourhood governance is a tinkering at the edge which will not really address citizen disconnection or improve public services. Devolution at the local level therefore needs to be part of a much bigger reform process, which starts with central government and moves down to regional governance, local government, and area and neighbourhood structures.



There remains a huge cultural challenge to making this agenda work. I recently attended a think tank session at which a key government figure expressed confusion at why the people he met on the doorstep during the election campaign did not understand the connection between the decisions taken in Whitehall and the improvements in their local school or street. This suggests to me that the culture of centralism is deeply embedded in the minds of those at the centre. The very title of the event asked speakers to consider how citizens can be reconnected with Westminster. The question is surely how we can reconnect our citizens with the political process at all, helping them to understand, influence and even take decisions which affect them, their communities and their areas.



Councils have already shown themselves willing to begin decentralising. Can Whitehall follow?



Councils embracing localism: lessons in decentralisation is available from info@nlgn.org.uk, price £21.25 (inc p&p)


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