The constancy of change runs through councillors’ working life, often brought on by central policy revision or thinking about what local government should, or should not be doing. Much change is designed to regulate, control and limit what councillors can do or shape their activities.
Ironically, the decade-long hollowing-out of local government and the shifting of responsibilities in and out of local government have opened up new space for councillors to exert influence, if not control, over increasingly fragmented public services. All councillors, including often overlooked parish and town councillors, have seen their role diminished by successive governments, only to be expected to do more and more for their communities.
Those pushing for the unitarisation of English local government make claims about the complexity of a two-tier system. Yet that system is clarity personified compared to the fragmented nature of vast tracks of the public service landscape where numerous agencies, providers and decision-makers interact. A myriad of public and private bodies, make decisions, develop public policy and spend public money, affecting local communities for decades to come, with little or no link of accountability or democratic oversight.
Councillors have always had a role in shaping those interactions as part of their community governance role but recently there has been an intensification and increase in the demands made on councillors to navigate and influence a range of external agencies and to draw their decisions and policies together into a cohesive shape with positive social impact on localities. Parish and town councillors attest to the same demands as their principal council counterparts given the very localised nature of their work.
The COVID pandemic highlights the vital nature of the governing role councillors undertake and the importance of closeness to the community in developing responses to this type of emergency. Local knowledge, networks, contacts and intelligence have been crucial for tackling the outbreak, but those factors are also crucial tools for councillors interacting with complex agency networks, before, during and after the outbreak and on a wide range of social, economic and political issues.
Drawing a wide and complex network of interacting bodies into recognising and tackling linked issues facing local communities requires that councillors negotiate, compromise, pressure, influence, cajole, mediate and apply all and any leverage to shaping the decisions made by other organisations – to govern through influence rather than power.
The governing through influence role councillors are developing operates on strategic and operational levels. Strategically councillors seek to shape the long-term polices of an exhausting list of organisations which include: the NHS, police, local enterprise partnerships, bus and rail companies, private developers, probation services, telecommunications companies, broadband providers, public utilities, the media government departments, plus a host of local bodies. The work extends far beyond a council’s ‘appointment to outside bodies’ list where councillors sit on a board of some kind; councillors are now making their own way into influencing those organisations which have an impact on the long-term development of local communities. It is not just council leaders and cabinet members that are undertaking this role; all councillors are meeting the demands of seeking to influence the strategic decisions of other organisations and facing increasing time demands in doing so.
Operationally councillors have always been expected to work in their wards and divisions with external bodies, but with a focus on more immediate outcomes and solutions to very localised and specific problems and service needs. Skills developed in attempting to influence the strategic decisions of organisations are paying dividends for councillors dealing with the more immediate issues and problems of their patch.
But, all is not rosy. Councillors report that the title ‘councillor’ does not open up all doors to all organisations; neither does it open the door to the same national organisation in different parts of the country. Much time, energy and effort is expanded by councillors developing working relationships with managers in organisations, with some proving to be very resistant to recognising any legitimate role for councillors in communicating with, let alone influencing, what they do. Councillors are faced, in some cases, with displaying the same resilience, determination, workload and time commitments that got them elected in the first place to simply talking to some organisations on a superficial level. Again not overlooking town and parish councillors in these demands who face intense and very local pressure to ‘do something about…’ (fill in the service over which no council has direct control).
Added to the challenge of governing without power is the often distorted public, media and government understanding of the powers, functions and roles of councillors and an often jaundiced view of councillors typically displayed in the media and public discourse. Councillors report often being accused by the public of living the life of Riley of the rates (despite the rates having been abolished 30 years ago) and for parish councillors the Vicar of Dibley syndrome can undermine, in the public eye, much of what they do.
So, why is this article entitled ‘In defence of councillors’? Firstly it’s the title of my book, so I thought I’d get a plug in. Secondly, and much more importantly, the councillor in England is an endangered species. The obsessive and unproven benefit of the charge of the local government Light brigade towards the guns of unitarisation means our councillor population will be decimated. The best way of defending councillors and the public service they provide is to stop abolishing them.
While the powers and functions of councillors have been diminished, the demands on their time for policy and case work and the developing role of an influencer of external organisations has grown and is set to increase. England already has the largest councils and fewest councillors across Europe – we do not need fewer councillors, but more, with more powers, functions and support to govern our localities.
If predictions about the local government White Paper are accurate, centralisers everywhere will be rubbing their hands together that England could lose more councillors as the Government carves up the map of England in an unprecedented act of municipal vandalism – who would want to be a councillor anyway!
Colin Copus is emeritus professor of local politics at De Montfort University and visiting professor at Ghent University