WCPP’s Prof Dan Bristow and Dr Jack Price outline key principles for local government reform.
In any plausible scenario for the future of local government in Wales, need and demand will continue to outstrip available funding for the foreseeable future. Social services, education and housing dominate local authority spending and cost pressures have risen significantly with rising demand, inflation and pay increases. And in the medium-to-longer term, wider trends, including demographic change, make it likely that councils will face ongoing pressure.
Without the prospect of significant future budget increases, we urgently need to reimagine how local government resources are deployed.
This is the overwhelming view of the newly established Independent Working Group on Sustainable Local Government for the Future, made up of local authority chief executives, elected council leaders and independent experts.
Without the prospect of significant future budget increases, we urgently need to reimagine how local government resources are deployed.
In the first step of the Group’s work to draw up a sustainable vision for the future of the sector, it has published a position paper laying out what it feels is the core purpose of local government in Wales, along with its fundamental functions. The paper is underpinned by evidence provided by the Wales Centre for Public Policy which has convened the Group in partnership with the WLGA. The Group is seeking widespread feedback on these early positions before developing a set of proposals to put to the sector and the next Welsh Government.
The core purpose and value of local government in Wales is local democracy
Group members agreed that local government is more than just a delivery agent for a set of functions and services: the purpose and motivation of local government is its proximity and responsiveness to residents and their needs. Being ‘close’ to their populations, elected councillors can understand and represent residents’ interests and design and deliver services that are responsive to local contexts. However, due to increased pressures on budgets and resources, local authorities are struggling to respond to local priorities which constrains their ability to deliver meaningful change.
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Positions of the Group on key functions of local government
Group members feel that the functions of local government, meaning the range of services that they deliver, are generally the right ones and there is no real appetite to ‘shift’ functions to the Welsh Government or other public bodies. However, specific areas of activity could be delivered differently and partnership and collaboration have a vital role to play. The group has come to the following positions:
- Social care needs to be funded and delivered differently, and integrated better with health, but should remain within the responsibility of local authorities. However, without significant investment from central UK Government, any changes to local funding and delivery of social care will have minimal changes to outcomes for residents.
- Public health responsibilities, currently held by health boards, need to be integrated with local authority decision making, but simply giving responsibility for running public health services to councils would likely create issues of scale for some smaller councils due to insufficient resources.
[…] due to increased pressures on budgets and resources, local authorities are struggling to respond to local priorities which constrains their ability to deliver meaningful change.
- Councils are uniquely placed to deliver effective preventative health policies. Early intervention and prevention are under-resourced as an increasing proportion of the available resource is focused on addressing acute needs.
- Responding to individuals with complex needs requires services to be joined up around the individual, which means services that are designed and delivered at a neighbourhood level, and rooted in collaboration across organisational boundaries and across sectors.
- Some functions could be better dealt with in collaboration with other councils, but only where collaborative efforts add value (for example by reducing costs, adding resilience, improving quality). These should be built on shared interests and priorities rather than geographical alignment.
Do you agree with these positions?
We’re keen to test this work with others. We deliberately created a small group to help us to manage this work in an efficient and effective way but while the Group members bring a wealth of expertise and experience to the work, it’s important to gather the views of the wider local government community and to understand the implications and trade-offs of the current views of the group.
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For instance, the democratic role of local government can be harder to fulfil when public-facing services are being squeezed due to budget pressures, particularly in an environment where there is pervasive distrust of politics and politicians.
If the sector largely agrees with the conclusions reached so far, to ensure that there can be a sustainable future for local government, the focus now must shift to ‘what does the future look like?’ and ‘how do we get there?’ The Group will be thinking about some key issues and areas of activity (such as finance, housing and homelessness, and social care) looking to build some actionable steps which can be delivered by the Welsh Government and local government following the Senedd elections.
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