Creeping Missions
Originally Published by the Local Government Chronicle – 10/06/2024
The opening salvoes of the general election have been as predictably dismal and dispiriting as one can imagine, as we reach the midway mark of what has turned out to be a rather low, dishonest decade.
With the masking of very imminent choices over increasing tax or reducing government spend to avoid cliff edge or fantasy public finance scenarios, the next four weeks will surely drag, fiscally and otherwise, as a midwit holiday from reality.
Cue today’s point-blank refusal from Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to countenance any reform of council tax, a promise to lock in aspic the property values of 1991 forever and a day. Albeit this is in the unlikely electoral scenario of a Conservative victory – with Sky Bet offering staggering odds of 4/9 for the party to lose more than 201 seats.
It’s against this backdrop that a poll released today by IPSOS showing that a vast majority of Conservative voters, three in four, feel public services have deteriorated since the last election should be considered. We are still the sixth largest national economy in the world and this sign of profound failure should not be acceptable.
Still, we have to await publication of the party manifestos to get any understanding of where the main parties seriously stand on issues of place and the local, addressing the serious issues that have remained conspicuous by their absence amid the dead cat bounces of national service and the rest. Small matters of political economy like the very financial viability of local government itself, the future of social care funding and provision or planning reform to address the housing permacrisis.
However, the political carnival will soon end and once the camp is struck the stark realities of governance will dawn, come what may, in early July. In preparation, it might be helpful to consider new scenarios in which machinery of government changes, led and overseen by Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff Sue Gray – and with a likely senior role for former Leeds City Council chief executive Tom Riordan and a return to Whitehall troubleshooter Baroness Casey – will play out and affect local delivery.
An emphasis on ‘mission led’ government portends a return to directing the white heat of government focus and ‘deliverology’ on single issues and ‘wicked’ societal problems such as poverty, inequality and sustainability, homelessness, rough-sleeping.
This suggests that fresh thought and ideas be brought to bear on the best institutional framework for delivering and measuring place-based outcomes. Indeed, the looming context of mission-led government creates potential for reviving the role of an independent oversight body, focused instead on local government delivery against the broad strategic missions and the overall goal of boosting inclusive, sustainable economic growth.
This could be carried out by a re-tooled OFLOG, given explicit operational departmental independence and tasked with analysing policy initiatives on their own terms. This could follow a similar function to that provided for Parliament by the National Audit Office or shadow how Ofsted independently monitors and regulates school performance for the Department for Education.
Such an institutional framework – encompassing collaborative approaches to service delivery and expenditure, operational performance and financial resilience, would help ensure that local government has both support and accountability in carrying out national missions of any stripe or hue and in the long-term, regardless of day-to-day policy focus at central government level.
The immediate task of the next government should be to offer as much certainty and stability for the local state to fully function with the essentials of day to day to delivery and placemaking. This is something we heard loud and clear across the country from local leaders when taking evidence for our Level Measures study into modern public service integration, where the constant refrain was of the value that a long-term settlement would provide in unlocking neighbourhood services.
The opportunity for the sector might be to embrace, through the prism of mission-led governance, a whole place approach that presents a roadmap to stability. And a possibility that from this stable platform can be built a scaffold for future moonshots – bold place-based reforms driven by radical transformation and improvement.
Jonathan Werran is chief executive, Localis