The new chair of the Local Government Association (LGA) is a man on a mission to change the Association – and local government – and to do it quickly.
Cllr Shaun Davies, who first stood as a councillor in 2011, became the youngest council leader in the country when he took over at Telford and Wrekin Council in 2016. Now, aged 37, he is the youngest ever chair of the LGA. ‘I know – I look a lot older,' he jokes.
But he has a plan. ‘I want the LGA to be the best member led organisation that it possibly can,' he says.
‘There's the mistake that anybody coming into an organisation at a senior level makes - to think that everything is bad. I absolutely don't think that… but that does not mean we shouldn't challenge ourselves.'
‘We need to challenge ourselves to go further and faster and be bolder and impatient.'
That includes helping spread best practice in the sector, striving for continuous improvement and, most of all, preparing for the next Government.
‘We need to be General Election ready,' he tells The MJ. His plan is to create a new local government act, to give the next government a blueprint for the sector.
‘We've got a huge amount of work to ensure we're influencing that first 100 days [of the next Government] and the first King's speech,' he says. ‘Let's look at the way in which we as a sector can come up with a local government act of 2024-25.'
As for the contents of his proposed bill, he is reluctant to be drawn as he says it is for the whole of local government to feed into, but he knows what it he does not want.
‘It isn't a begging bowl,' he suggests. ‘It's not a shopping list.' Instead of a long list of demands, he wants to create a partnership to deliver political priorities. But he does suggest that fees and charges – and the inability to charge enough to cover costs for things like fly-tipping – are a particular bugbear in his home authority.
‘The old ways of doing things isn't working and if you want to see national economic growth then you need to see local economic growth.'
The same is true of other services – building houses, improving health outcomes, improving the lives of children's services, fixing adult social care, children's services and the NHS – it all starts at the local level.
His other ambition is to look at the role of corporate parent. ‘I want to see how the LGA as an organisation can do more in this space,' he says. His ambition is to harness the convening power of the LGA to get Government, public bodies and the private sector to do more to support children and care leavers.
As the LGA grapples with the looming prospect of a new watchdog and a redesign of the sector led improvement agenda, he says: ‘We shouldn't apologise or be seen to be defensive about sector led improvement. We should want the sector to improve.'
Like a family, he explains, you ‘lean in' and support those who are struggling – and now that the Office for Local Government (Oflog) is happening, the sector needs to accept it. But, he adds: ‘We need to be confident that Oflog adds value to the sector and does not lead to, or drive, perverse incentives.'
He uses fly-tipping as an example – in Telford and Wrekin, they have made it easy to report fly-tipping. If he is measured on reported fly-tipping, should he turn off the reporting channels?
‘We also need to challenge the Government to use Oflog to challenge other public organisations such as the National Health Service and policing.
‘I'd go further and say that actually it would be really helpful to see an Oflog style assessment to Whitehall, and see how Whitehall interacts with local areas.'
His headlong rush toward an improved association and better services for the councils it serves is not purely down to his own impatience: his ambition for the sector are matched by his political ambitions. If all goes to plan, he will only have until the next General Election in the LGA post as he has been selected as a parliamentary candidate.
Cllr Davies could potentially be part of the next Government that he is gearing up the association to lobby – if, that is, both he and the Labour party are successful in the elections. He has, as leader of the LGA Labour Group, already had the ‘privileged' position of sitting in shadow cabinet – an extraordinary position for someone who has not yet been elected as an MP.
Of his new role, he says: ‘I will be leaving my political membership card in Telford when I come to do this job.' Whatever he does, he says he will always advocate for the sector. ‘I'm here to make an impact, whether I've got 18 weeks, or 18 months, I'm here to make an impact,' he adds.
