PluggedIN: The role of newly elected councillors
Author: Alex Thomson, in the MJ |
It is never easy being the new boy or girl, something that hundreds of new councillors across the country are doubtless finding as they settle into their new role as elected representatives.
There are rules (and laws) to learn, customs to assimilate, building layouts to grasp and, most nebulously, cultures to understand. And while some of these newly elected councillors (those with purple and yellow rosettes, perhaps) probably didn’t really believe that their candidacy would lead to them being burdened by the cares of office, burdened they most certainly are.
So what can they expect? Well a degree of localised fame/notoriety (delete as appropriate) is standard, and lots of being held accountable for things that you are not responsible for.
They might also find themselves spending quite a lot of time wondering how on earth the various parts of the public sector became quite so siloed, and wondering if there isn’t a better way of doing things (there is).
But most of all they can expect plenty of hard decisions. Being a semi-professional cynic, I sometimes wonder if politicians who bang on about making difficult choices are more comfortable extolling their decision-making skills, than actually taking said decisions.
But that certainly doesn’t apply to local government which finds itself, once again, on the frontline of public sector reform but this time against a backdrop of historically severe financial projections.
For some years now local government has put in a pretty strong performance, demonstrably better than the rest of the public sector. But that was the old world where things were pretty static and what councils did, and how they did it, hadn’t much changed for decades.
The future is very different, and it will require the new and forthcoming cadres of councillors to up the sector’s game even further. They will have to be more dynamic. They will need better political antennae to understand what really matters to their residents, and to use their soft power to make the best use of constricted resources.
But most of all they will have to eschew easy answers, because there won’t be any. In other words they will need to be leaders, making tough decisions and taking their electorates with them as they do. As Tony Blair observed ‘the art of leadership is saying no, not yes’, and saying no is never easy. Good luck to them.