Centralisation, local decline and the future of community power
Download essay
Other Ideas is a new series of essays published by Localis, featuring perspectives from our team, our research fellows and the wider local government family.
Ever since the radical restructuring of public finances that heralded the beginning of austerity policy in 2010, successive governments have promised to balance their policy agendas with a commensurate uptick in control for local communities. The language of “big society”, “taking back control”, “levelling up” and now the “community empowerment” element of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill invoke a commitment to get power down to the neighbourhood level. In this piece, Localis senior researcher Callin McLinden examines the attempts to translate rhetoric to policy and looks ahead to mechanisms that can be used by government to engender real community control.
Some key points include:
- The paper links the proliferation of undelivered promises of community control to the growing disenfranchisement with politics as usual felt across the population – evidenced by the record lack of support for the two traditional main parties in the May 2025 local elections.
- Examining initiatives to build community control over policy and the local environment, McLinden finds that short-term cycles, a lack of capacity funding and an overriding theme of central government micromanagement to be key barriers to genuine ‘double devolution’.
- While the analysis finds some promise in new government initiatives, there is still clearly much to be done in embedding mechanisms for meaningful participation in the policy process, particularly in a policy environment which favours a regional approach.
The paper concludes with an overview of tools like participatory budgeting, co-ownership of assets and community-led economic strategies as key to bringing politics and the policymaking process back to the neighbourhood level in English local governance.