Localis responds to the 2024 King’s Speech
The King’s Speech 2024 arrives just eight months after the last one, two weeks into our new Parliament and at what the government must hope is still an early stage of its honeymoon period. Much of its contents have been trailed in speeches before and after the election, and a great deal of optimism about the legislation contained therein can be found among the policy-headed types of the world. Or at least, if not optimism, there is a positive atmosphere created by the sense that we may now have a policy agenda that can be seen through in a relatively stable manner for several years – which will, in comparison with recent years, seem like a very long time.
Even at this early stage though, the roadblocks ahead are visible. There will be a need for real conviction government of the kind not seen since the 1980s to see this through, and Rachel Reeves’ invocation of Thatcher in her Mais lecture is instructive here. For local government, there is much to celebrate in principle, yet a great deal will depend on a funding settlement that can arrest decline. There are opportunities here for a reset of the relationship with the central state, but inherent within the opportunities are challenges of political maturity and coherent governance that must be met. Below are some key thoughts about this new agenda from a Localis perspective.
Planning and political courage
The much-discussed planning reforms took a step further into the light with the top-level outline of nothing less than a Planning and Infrastructure Bill. The promised legislation will streamline the planning system and modernise the local decision-making framework, creating a system geared towards delivering appropriate forms of housing in the places which need it most. If this sounds familiar, it is worth noting that the type of planning system indicated in the King’s Speech is not all that far away in its intention from the type of planning system advocated for in the ill-fated Planning for the Future White Paper of the early Johnsonian years.
The reason for the similarities in policy is that Keir Starmer’s Labour party finds itself asking a similar question to the Tories of 2019: how do we give people a stake in this society, such that they might have an interest in the preservation of its institutions? This was, as recent events have shown, a potentially existential question for the Conservatives and it remains so for Labour, with the Reform UK vote on July 4th standing testament to the rife disaffection with politics and its ability to deliver across society. The housing crisis is not the only reason for this, but historically speaking there is good reason to believe that the acquisition of a mortgage can do wonders to curb an individual’s tendency for political recklessness. Therefore, the political imperative is to reform the planning system into one which does a far better job of building the right types of homes in the right types of places than the current framework manages.
This need also dovetails with the excessively communicated drive for economic growth. Major building projects are excellent generators of economic activity, and long-term works at a large scale can also help with national skills programmes of the kind intended with the Skills England Bill. Furthermore, the type of renewable energy expansion needed for GB Energy necessitates taking a machete to red tape in infrastructure planning.
So, the requirement for reform is clear, cutting across the government’s policy agenda and possessing a clear political imperative. But the barriers to implementation which derailed the last serious attempt at reform were not really based on practical considerations and were certainly not rooted in long-term political calculus. The test for planning reform is political courage in the short-term. That everyone wants new housing, but no one wants new housing near them is a truism for a reason, and getting anywhere near 300,000 new homes a year will require real political courage as opposition coalesces and begins to manifest in local elections, as well as byelections of the kind that put paid to the Boris Johnson homebuilding revolution. Labour have talked a good game about facing down the ‘blockers’ and getting on with building – their ability to do so will be far more important than the legislative detail to the overall project of reforming our planning system and addressing the housing crisis.
A lack of brass tacks
Housing is of course not the only issue which drives dissatisfaction with politics and disbelief in the ability of government to deliver meaningful change. The state of public service provision is not lost on the British public, with satisfaction at record lows. At the most tangible level, this boils down to local government provision of neighbourhood, or ‘street scene’ services, such as refuse collection, street cleaning, park management and a host of other very visible and very financially constrained service lines. The King’s Speech is of course not a spending review, and a long-term financial settlement has been promised and would be extremely welcome before the year is out. This is not nothing – when we were canvassing the views of local corporate leadership for our Level Measures project last year, there was a general consensus that even with the same amount of money, services could be provided better with a longer-term settlement.
Yet the need to address the funding gap remains, and it must be done within this Parliament if people are to feel that the significant change in political life has any bearing at all on change in their actual lives. Disaffection with the political system and society at large starts at street level and it must be addressed as an emergency, particularly amidst all this talk of devolution, local empowerment and economic growth. The levelling up agenda never fully grasped the importance of neighbourhood service provision to how people viewed place and its impact on their pride in where they live, the same mistake cannot be made again with the new government’s drive for economic growth. Liveability and quality of environment matter, and depend upon properly funded public services.
Again, its not a spending review. But still, the £7.3bn outlined for the creation of a new wealth fund might have been accompanied by some commitment to close the funding gap in council services. While crowding in private investment and nurturing the industries of the future is important, it is not a lack of giga-factories which drives public disaffection with politics and its results but a marked and observed decline in environments and its maintenance. There has to be space in the discussion of growth, infrastructure and devolution for the mundane but crucial local government functions which undergird our society.
A middle way?
While the planning reforms will be of acute political concern at local level, the bill of most general interest to the local government family is naturally the English Devolution Bill. The introductory spiel recognises the success of devolution in the past decade as well as the rather frustrating externality of an increasingly messy and patchwork governance map. The English local government landscape was far from parsimonious even before the introduction of the combined authority model, and the intervening decade of ad-hoc dealmaking has only deepened the complexity. While the aggravating effect this has on local government policy wonks who crave a more manageable spreadsheet is ultimately not a matter of top priority to most English citizens, confusion over boundaries and authority can act as a barrier to investment and economic growth along with it.
The need to arrive at a greater level of coherence and extend devolution across the whole of the country is recognised in the new government, and with it comes compromise with the local level. The uneven and incomplete nature of the devolution map is at least in part down to a single-minded focus from central government on directly elected mayors as the sole proprietors of democratic legitimacy, with serious devolution of powers consistently depending on the adoption of the mayoral combined authority model, within geographies preferred by Whitehall. This hard line was softened somewhat in recent years through the extension of county deals, but even still the clear preference embodied in the devolution framework of the Levelling Up White Paper was for the model of unitary authorities with a combined authority sat atop in the manner pioneered in Greater Manchester by the late Sir Howard Bernstein and colleagues.
The problem with this approach was illustrated perfectly in Cornwall, where residents of the Duchy said ‘no’ to a mayor and thus scuppered the chances of a ‘Level 4’ devolution settlement for the council. This is a risk to all attempts to even out the map so long as the MCA model remains (a) compulsory for serious powers and (b) optional for residents. The choice for a government bent on universalising devolution was therefore to either force mayors on these areas or be more flexible on model. This government appear to have opted for the latter. The promise to consider all formal requests for devolution, without a prerequisite that these requests come from particular authority types, is a step towards a more pragmatic approach to addressing asymmetric devolution. While it is unlikely that this will herald the devolution of a raft of powers to district councils, it does indicate that political maturity and evolved institutions at the local level can bid for powers without jumping through an ever-changing course of hoops.
Indeed, throughout the documentation a willingness to work with local leaders of all kinds is displayed, from bus franchising to skills policy, in contrast to the usual reserving of serious devolution discussions for Greater Manchester and the West Midlands Combined Authority. While there is still a ‘weighting towards advanced mayoral settlements’ to be included in the final legislation, this is a positive step in the right direction and represents a softening of central government paternalism. There is seemingly no strong desire here for mass unitarisation and an openness to devolving to effective governance of any kind. The ball is now in the court of local leaders in those areas where mayoral governance is seen as political unworkable but greater devolution is desired to put together an offer that, as the old film had it, can’t be refused.
Concluding thoughts
A welcome reset, then, in the role of councils in the central government policy imagination. Success will likely depend on how the inherent tensions within this agenda, particularly around planning, play out. By the time the planning bill makes its way through, an amenable relationship with local government may not be possible in all places. Still there is much to argue for in advocating for the sector, which we will be looking to do at Localis in a busy summer running up to party conference season.
Before the year is out we will be releasing the results of our research into the role of the South East, its councils and employers in this new world. We will also be examining the future of local corporate governance, so crucial to much of what has been discussed here. Beyond this, we will also be revisiting and renewing our research which was slated for release at the postponed LGA conference, on whole place transformation and strategic procurement.
Joe Fyans, Head of Research