Governance, standards and localism – another way ahead

In September 2012 The Economist celebrated the localism movement in local government. It observed the Blairite localism was from central government down. Their hope was that this time localism will develop from the bottom up [1]. This article considers localism from a broad perspective.

A key turning point for local government can be located in the 1990s with a number of themes coming together; best summarised as a belief that private sector management and commercial pressures should be applied to the public sector (referred to as New Public Management), plus a politics which position a value on community that is Communitarianism. Professor Tony Giddens of the Reith Lectures and LSE labelled the thought at the time as the Third Way. It was at the time strongly associated with the Clinton and Blair leaderships. The White Paper Strong Local Leadership – Quality Public Services [2] sets out the thinking. The language of the market and the introduction tellingly sets the scene:

“...People therefore expect a great deal from their council. And those expectations are rising. To meet them, councils have constantly to seek new and more effective ways to deliver customer-focused services and lead their communities. The proposals in this white paper will provide a framework in which all can do so, through the application of the Government’s four principles of public services reform:

A national framework of standards and accountability for the delivery of high quality services and effective community leadership

Within this framework, devolution to local councils to encourage diversity and creativity, giving them the freedom they need to respond to and meet their communities’ needs.

Building local capacity in recognition of the need for flexibility at the front-line to exploit the opportunities we are opening up, and deliver the improved services and effective leadership we all want to see.

And more choice for customers, with access to an alternative supplier where performance falls below acceptable standards..." [3]

In this extract we encounter the theme of community as customer where their encounter with the state is a “front-line” a metaphor of confrontation[4] or at best at the counter. The Government’s concept of community leadership pictured the role as though they were managers in a supermarket. Now as the finances dry up to a trickle local authorities are no longer in a financial or legal position to provide a Keynesian redistributive role and instead a greater reliance has been placed on the private and not-for-profit sector as an alternative means of delivering services[5].

This change in role creates a serious challenge for elected members. Their role is to act as democratically appointed officials of local government but their collective body has been set a task to deliver services to customers. The Blair vision locally was set too. It was about collecting together other agents of the state particularly the police; the health services and other publicly funded and not-for-profit agencies. Through Local Strategic Partnerships the Police in principle a non-political organisation have became deeply involved in politics as the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 obliged the council and police to work together to tackle crime. Over time I fear this will be seen to be a grave error – but that issue is worthy for another day.

In 1997 a paper [6] was published which compiled a list of the four most common activities of elected representitives which were:

• Working with the grass roots communities
• Setting strategic direction for public authorities and services
• Partnerships with other bodies
• Voicing the needs of the community at national and European arenas

I would be inclined to add a fifth for local government; that is the surgeries at the local level particularly where the member has a high concentration of social housing in their ward. Contrast this with Blair’s vision. While there is similarity with the partnerships the Blair direction is explicitly about customers.

The capabilities to take on this role without training and practice has meant that the power has transferred from elected members to employed officials. A PhD thesis by Philip Lloyd-Williams (2011) highlighted the increased and dominant role of the appointed elite officials and that due to their agency and structure power has moved from the more traditional participatory-consultative arrangement of elected councillors, elite officials and local party politics. The observations of Giddens are very pertinent in that the change in structure has very much redistributed the roles but the complexity generated means it is difficult to “keep a coherent narrative going” [7]

As long ago as 1978 it was observed[8] “the Councillor should be given the necessary support to allow him to comprehend what is going on around him and develop his abilities in coping with his[9] role”

It is observed [10] that the Third Way led into localism with the development of a strong civil society and the local government taking on a role of “enabler” But the new label of “governance” is distinct from government [11]. The role has shifted towards a private sector performance management outlook on the services which are provided by private supplies and out-sourced providers[12]. This structure is essentially about service organisations. It was commented: “the organisational change is from unresponsive paternalistic and leaden bureaucracies to the customer driven flexible quality orientated and responsive organisations of the future” [13]

The challenge is that while the rhetoric is about local the methods to deal with local issues are heavily proscribed. The Third Way’s local freedom was more about where there was not central guidance and instead referred to “institutional void and ambiguity” [14].

But increased private involvement arrangements are regulated by contracts which remove the ability for Councillors to get involved. Well, a number of members may be appointed to a consultative panel including the contractors and council management but their ability to influence is limited by the contract terms and specification. The governance of areas of service are only local in the sense of being local contracts and so the councillors role would be as an advocate for customer services rather than political change. It therefore follows while they become at a local level expected to take up the role of agent for the organisation and also agent for the community their ability to make change is far less than if they were dealing with a DSO.

Section 27 of the Localism Act 2011 requires that the authority promotes standards inter alia a local code. Yes I know it goes further than that but in reality localism’s governance and standards heavily relies on the calling to account by means of complaints. It therefore needs a complaint to activate it. So if no one complaints nothing happens. The source of the complaints will either be internal (employees and managers) or external (citizenship and stakeholders).

Academic work sought to locate the local government key management values and found near universal historical common law system of appointment on merit and a neutrality ethic. These principles though deep-rooted had no basis in stature or regulations. So in England it is build upon the proposition that the employed officials are servants to the elected officials (Councillors) subject to the law. Published research says as a result the employed officials will carry out their instructions and only if an instruction was illegal would an officer refuse to carry it out [15] . While the managers would argue the public interest is how they act they nevertheless accept the elected officials: “should be the final arbiter of public interest” [16]

This seems to indicate that the role of ethics played no part once elected Members had made a decision.

In the United States a recent paper[17] argued that there needs to be cultivation of citizen watchdogs. While this has taps directly into localism in the adversarial system of party politics it is difficult to see why this would not too be highly political. 

So who is going to complain? If complaints are made about the politicians internally they will come from the management team or from other politicians, but the manager’s role is to carry out the will of the politicians or be the politicians. The literature on public sector employed leadership competencies has a lack of clarity as to what it means to be a leader. Partly it’s about risk, as the level of risk is different where a service is being provided such as health education or local government where a failure of service is not acceptable.

The difficulty is that New Labour’s governance clearly included political leadership by politicians not by officials, so officials that were minded to take on that role were acting politically and would risk a clash; though they could fill in the gaps but at the same time the increase use of contracts meant councillors role was limited.

The Third Way sought a change in governance for greater local accountability and improved performance. However once the services became out-sourced the contrary seemed to be the case with less scrutiny as the politicians were unaware as to what was actually going on relying on the performance indicators produced by the contracts / partners. Mintzberg (1975) found that senior management spent as much of their time with peers and persons outside their organisation as they did with their own subordinates and as a result did not always know what was going either! But as observed supra the expectation is that the political leaders would be making the political decisions.

As a consequence elected members while not in possession of the technical or professional know-how are in a position of power over even very senior officials who are “nominal leaders” [18]. While performance is affected by the environment of people the type of work and objectives but there is the “public sector ethos”. It is therefore very difficult for them to hold elected leaders to account if at all and were they to attempt to do so they would face the accusation they have crossed the boundary to act politically.

In a very recent paper Spicker points to the reluctance of Chief Executives to resign when their organisation is shown to fail: “There is a disturbing side effect to the uncritical acceptance of the idea of leadership: its potential to justify and validate bad practice...” Spicker (2012, p.43)

Spicker concludes in a gloomy summary that there is little to support leadership sets a primary behaviours in an organisation; that leadership is better executed by a group or an individual and that private sector leadership principles are transferable to public service.

The literature identifies the change of the New Labour era has lead to new forms of governance underpinned by local accountability, yet apart from the ballot box at elections the accountability in practice is lead by the need for a person to make a complaint this is hardly satisfactory because it needs something to go wrong for a complaint to be triggered furthermore it needs an individual to make the step of doing so. Under the previous Conservative and New Labour administrations the role of overseeing good administration was established by a national body; the Audit Commission which has a supervising role however the Secretary of State announced his plans to abolish it by the Coalition Government [19].

If the Localism Act 2011 is to be effective in terms of standards it will need the whole-hearted support of the members. In my opinion it will be through the agent of getting elected Members to embrace the values in public life and live them in their practice lies the route to transformation. Other forms of accountability such as officers and complaints are unlikely to create public confidence because historically the officers avoid politics and the complaints process has been undermined by trivial and partisan complaints. The picture is that any improvement in standards will need to come in terms of the politicians deciding to embrace standards and behaviours and due to pressure from the community because officers are unlikely to bring complaints as they will be seen to be acting to politically.

Given that the improvement in standards of conduct will not be achieved by the challenge by officers of elected officials and that there are concerns nursed about the effectiveness of the new standards regime it does not mean that it does not have potential. We have to do what we can with what we have. To improve localisms effectiveness will therefore require the change to come from elected officials and empowering the community to better make complaints if they feel they need to do so. The energies of professionals would therefore be best directed towards efforts to improve training and development of elected Members in terms of ethics and behaviours.

Paul Feild is a Solicitor in local government currently working on a Doctorate in Business Administration with an interest in governance.