Public satisfaction has barely dropped despite councils facing 40% funding cutbacks, according to the latest figures revealed by the Local Government Association.
Net satisfaction with council services was 70% in January this year, down just two per cent since September 2012, at a time when councils faced unprecedented cuts and local government watchdog the Audit Commission was scrapped.
A Smith Square report entitled the Evaluation of sector-led improvement suggests the figures show the coalition's plans to replace top-down scrutiny – which cost around £2bn annually – with local accountability, has succeeded in delivering bottom-up improvement.
More than two-thirds of the public (70%) expressed themselves very or fairly satisfied with the way local councils run things, a figure which remained stable over the course of the polling.
In addition, more than three-quarters (77%) of people trusted their councils to make decisions about how services are provided locally, compared with a mere 13% placing trust in the Government.
The report acknowledged that measuring the impact of sector-led improvement on the public is not easy, but argued that at the simplest level, it could be seen as successful ‘if public trust in local government remains the same or improves' – despite the shift from top-down performance management to sector self-monitoring.
Objective analysis across a series of 97 measures of local authority performance pointed to a positive direction of travel, with around three-quarters (74%) of the metrics indicating improvement, 7% reflecting no change and under one-fifth (19%) a deterioration.
Findings from the survey of members and senior officials showed high levels of awareness and approval of the sector-led approach to improvement as well as strong confidence in local government's ability to boost performance and show actual proof of better services.
Evidence also suggested the LGA's support offer, which will include more than 350 peer challenges by the end of 2014, is valued by councils and seen as helpful in driving improvement efforts.
Cllr Peter Fleming, chair of the LGA's improvement and innovation board, said the
achievements councils had made through the sector-led improvement approach offered proof of its success and demonstrated what authorities could achieve by working together and supporting one another.
‘The previous top-down approach was estimated to cost £2bn a year, whereas sector-led improvement is locally-driven, much cheaper and more effective,' Cllr Fleming added.
‘But the best barometer of sector-led improvement is the level of satisfaction and trust that members of the public have in councils and this has remained consistently high,' he added.
