Faced with the prospect of significant further funding cuts, local authorities should consider building local coalitions to resist government imposed austerity 2.0. Such coalitions could involve citizens, charities, faith groups, community groups, trade unions and businesses.
The charity and wider voluntary and community sector should be recognised even more as voice for local people and their communities than as a provider of cheap contracted public services or as the alternative to publicly funded services. It should be involved in budget and resource planning, as well as a core member of the coalition to oppose further central government funding cuts.
Local businesses should be similarly consulted. They rely on local services, planning, and local infrastructure. They benefit from direct local authority spending and the spending of local authority staff. They have a vested interested in well run and effective local authorities.
Local authorities need to adopt and implement communications strategies and programmes to explain to local citizens, community groups and businesses the benefit of local public services to them and to the wider local economy and community. They should also explain in simple but accurate ways how these services are funded, the impact of government cutbacks over the last decade, their shortfall in revenue, and the available financial and policy options (including the potential impact of these options). They should include in such explanations details of their statutory responsibilities, the demand and unmet demand for services as well as previous cuts (and estimates of underfunding for specific services).
Such action should not be challengeable as misusing public funds for political purposes. Local authorities are entitled to explain the facts and to share evidence. They need to avoid being scapegoated and/or wrongly blamed for harmful cuts imposed by others including Whitehall.
Hard, difficult, and almost certainly damaging choices will have to be made so it is vital that there is an informed public debate and understanding of what these could mean, and the views of local stakeholders should be taken into account by local authority leaders.
As part of the process of gaining public support it is vital that local authorities demonstrate their commitment to using public money prudently. I would suggest that this means transparently demonstrating that all expenditure is assessed against criteria based on effectiveness, efficiency, the impact on the local economy, the pursuit of both equity and equality, and addressing the climate emergency. Similarly, any proposed cuts should be assessed on the same basis.
External audit and inspection reports together with benchmarking data should be widely disseminated both to demonstrate transparency and accountability, and to enhance public understanding.
There may be opportunities to pursue shared services, shared resources and common assessment processes with other neighbouring local authorities and the wider local public sector including, for example the NHS. It is vital that budget decisions take into account the implications for other public services and local businesses. For example, redundancies may lead to less spending in local shops and increased demand for mental health services. And there will be many more examples of inflicting service and financial demands on other budgets and agencies.
It could be said that local authorities have too often hidden the real costs of cuts and the consequences of government fiscal and spending decisions. Of course, there is a very strong case for local authorities seeking to minimise the damage that cuts make, and to prioritising their expenditure to protect vulnerable groups and key local objectives. Local authorities have moved on from where some were in the 1980s when faced with the onslaught of central government funding cuts.
This is not the time for setting unbalanced budgets, but it is also not the time to act as if local government is not political and its leaders are not politicians. There must be a limit to managerialism and technocratic responses. It is time to stand up and to say ‘enough is enough’ whilst acting to protect the vulnerable, staff and others as best as is possible given the limited resources available.
Many local authorities can and will respond to the financial crisis over the next year or so as well as they have done over the last decade, but some may fail to remain solvent. Services will be at risk in every authority, demand will be unmet (and simply changing eligibility criteria for accessing services will usually only mask short term pressures and fuel long term ones), staff will be anxious and jobs will be at risk, and communities will be frightened. People are already struggling with a cost of living crisis, insecure employment, and a lack of or reduced critical public services.
As leaders of place local authorities are well placed to speak and stand up for their communities. The need for this has never been more urgent so my advice is to show leadership and reach out to and engage citizens, charities, faith groups, community groups, trade unions and businesses. I detect that the tide of public opinion will be with those councils which engage with their communities, citizens and other stakeholders in the ways suggested in this piece.
John Tizard is a strategic advisor and commentator
