The pandemic has hit our most deprived communities hardest, says Wolverhampton City Council leader Ian Brookfield. There needs to be a new deal to help struggling families and level up the country.
Wolverhampton is a proud city, at the centre of the country, part of the industrial heartland that is the Black Country and the West Midlands. We are proud of our heritage and diversity.
If you visit here in better times, you'll get a warm welcome from Wulfrunians (the name for locals) and you stand a chance of bumping into someone who speaks one of 90 different languages spoken here.
Deadly coronavirus hit us hard and early. It has laid bare one of the starkest realities of the current pandemic. Far from being a great ‘leveller,' it struck - like a hammer blow – deprived communities. Indeed, national figures highlight this unfortunate connection – patients from the poorest communities represent 50% of all critically ill patients with coronavirus. They are the very people struggling to climb out of social, economic and health poverty, the very people aspiring to see a ‘levelling' of their life chances and opportunities. The very people being hit hardest.
We shouldn't be surprised, policy over centuries has benefitted the rich at the expense of the poor. In our city alone, you can walk a few miles from the richest to the poorest neighbourhood and life expectancy reduces by seven to eight years for both men and women.
More recently, years and years of austerity and underfunding for our key public services have exacerbated the conditions of our poorest residents. For them getting level is tough, if not nigh on impossible. How do you climb a ladder when the lowest five wrungs have been cut off?
This virus puts a spotlight on the places that need more and better funding – both short-term and sustained in the longer-term. The City of Wolverhampton is one of the poorest cities in the UK according to Office of National Statistics (ONS) data. We are making progress in improving educational attainment, boosting employment, reducing health problems (such as obesity) and building better homes. Our mantra is that if you can give a family a good home, give parents good jobs, give kids a good education and start in life, you'll drastically improve health and well-being, lifting families and whole communities.
We know our city best, we know what makes it tick and what works here. Our council is an award-winning organisation that manages money with a tight grip but one which also takes prudent, commercial risks if the prize is better opportunities for local people.
As a council, we have had to take an interventionist approach to stimulate growth and resurgence. We believe in our city and we have proven it can be lifted with targeted investment. Before the virus hit, this was being complimented by more private investment – nurtured and supported by the council.
The lesson here is, give us freedom, funding and power and we will deliver strong, investable transformation programmes that stimulate economic growth and bring jobs. We've done it before, and we will do it again. With the assets our city has to offer, we remain confident of playing a major role in regional and national recovery. We must remain ambitious and optimistic for the future, even though we know that the virus could put us back years and require us to ‘dial up' our interventions.
The Government talks about levelling up the country. Coronavirus should highlight the places where this needs to be turbo-charged. Data is showing how the virus is hitting struggling and diverse communities hardest. We need to see greater acknowledgement in Government about this - and greater focus.
The scale of the crisis has meant that national government has sometimes struggled to understand how local systems work and how to deliver national policy locally. Reflecting on the learning from Wolverhampton, there have been challenges with the national approach to PPE, testing and support for shielding families.
It's been left to the council to look after its own: ordering seven times more PPE direct than we got from national stocks, delivering 500,000 meals to shielding families over six-to-seven weeks and working with partners to set up effective local testing. This is how levelling works and how it should work in the future. Give us the resources and the means – local councils will deliver.
It's important to acknowledge that speedy Government emergency funding has helped in the short-term. But longer-term, we all know, that in the great post-crisis financial reckoning, our depleted treasury coffers could see more austerity in places like Wolverhampton.
And that's even before we mention the impact of the B-word (Brexit!) during the current c-word world! Local government has proven during this crisis that it can do great things, in real-time, and make a big difference to people's lives. The urgency of levelling up should be no different. Importantly, economic infrastructure investment should go hand-in-hand with social investment, investment in people.
We need to learn the lessons of the virus – both central and local government. Meeting ‘tests', as steps to a solution, is the current political fashion. Being frank, my whole focus is on how we level-up and lift our city, so I'd like to set three ‘Brookfield' tests' for the PM and his team:
- Prioritise public spending on our most deprived communities to alleviate social inequalities and ensure struggling families are not left further behind
- Fund us properly – be unequivocal, sustain it and cut any ‘strings'
- Trust local government – the public does! And give us a much greater say in local delivery and a seat at the table to influence ‘levelling up'.
This virus has done terrific harm. It doesn't seem to be going away any time soon, putting even greater burden on struggling families and communities. I want to get back onto the priorities for my city: jobs and investment, opportunities for youngsters and tackling the climate emergency. We want to be bold and innovative.
Given the challenging national picture, we're also up for rethinking and refreshing our role so we can continue to deliver great, sustainable public services. But we need a new deal from Government – levelling up now means something different and something far more urgent. It needs to have the focus and responsiveness of an emergency response on local economic and social infrastructure in hard-hit areas. It's going to be a long-haul, but local government's up for the challenge and its role has never been more important.
Councillor Ian Brookfield is leader of City of Wolverhampton Council
